Chapter 6 - Soul Crystal

Chapter 6

Salran Mountains, Starnor Imperial Border Territories

Salran Mountains

"So...this is my soul crystal?"

"Seems like it anyway." Said Stellyra as she bent over to get a closer look at the crystal. Airah knew it wouldn't make any actual difference, as the AI could only 'see' through her senses, but still. "It corresponds to the description anyway. White, shiny, floats in the air. Emits light. Came from your innards."

Airah winced. When she'd learned she had a crystal inside of her body, which she could 'expulse', vomit out really, she'd been very confused as to the purpose of it all. But here it was, she'd followed the instincts listed which Stellyra had helpfully stimulated, and a slightly drool covered crystal was happily floating in front of them.

"Right. So that's what enables me to get stronger?"

"So the briefing says." Stellyra straightened back up. "Apparently it draws some kind of power from riches and artifacts nearby, and converts it into something that in turns make you more powerful."

"So how rich I am determines how tough I am?"

"Not...really. The document isn't necessarily clear, but I think it's more of a permanent power increase. So if you lose your, well, hoard, you just stop growing more powerful, you don't just lose your accumulated progress."

"That's good. I wouldn't want to be afraid of spending my money to avoid turning myself into a wimp."

Stellyra laughed out loud.

"No, I suppose not!" She shook her head. "Still, this is weird. How in the hell would you draw power from...money? I mean, yeah, artifacts in some way I suppose it would make sense, but what, if we have a stack of bank notes, or hell, government bonds, it just generates power out of them?"

"Might I remind you that I'm currently a flying, fire breathing lizzard who can magically turn into a human?"

Stellyra chuckled.

"Fair enough. Not any weirder than that I guess." She pulled out a holographic window showing the briefing document she was looking at. "Alright, so it says here that you can activate it in some way. And then you'll gain a bunch of stuff. Like the ability to always sense where it is, plus you can use it as a 'teleportation anchor', and a list of other things. Dependent on it being stationary though."

"We can't move it?"

"Well yes, but it then requires to be reset. It's not like a breeze will cause it, the radius appears to be pretty wide, but it...anchors itself in its surrounding somehow. Part of what allows it to draw power from riches, according to the documents."

"Right. So how to I activate it?"

"Like this." Airah felt once more like a mental muscle was twitching, and she focused on it.

She felt as if someone was draining her very essence, and her large body collapsed onto the ground as the crystal shone like a thousand spotlight, illuminating the cavern.

"AIRAH! Are you alright?!?"

Airah looked up at Stellyra's avatar, and blinked. Was she...wearing an Imperial Navy uniform? Then the avatar corrected, and Stellyra was back in her casual, ever changing clothes.

"I'm fine." She groaned, and got back up on shaky dragon legs. "Fuck, what happened?"

"I think you activated it. But it must have really taken it out of you." The AI gestured at the crystal as she stepped back to give her bonded human some space. "It looks to be functional anyway. Its much brighter if nothing else. Feel anything different?"

Airah blinked, a realized that yes, she did feel different.

"I think I can feel it, at the edge of my awareness. Like...Like knowing where the parts of my body are at all time." She pushed the sensation through the mind link. "See?"

Stellyra nodded.

"Yeah. Odd. Still, useful. Alright, now, can you feel some warmth coming from it?"

Airah closed her eyes, and nodded. It was barely noticeable, but it was like a bare trickle of something warm coming from the crystal. She couldn't really put it into words, so she just pushed the sensation through the mind link as well.

"Yeah, feel it?"

"Yep. Alright, good! According to the documents, that's the power you're getting from the riches you have in range of the crystal."

"Right. Wait, does it have to be my riches? Couldn't I just spit it out in a bank vault?"

Stellyra blinked, and shrugged.

"The docs don't say, but maybe? Either way, I wouldn't advise doing that. There are some very dire warnings about losing your soul crystal in there."

"Ah. Should I swallow it back up then?"

"I don't think so. According to the documents it has some kind of protection barrier. So nothing short of a very determined and powerful series of attack will damage it. Besides, it would break the activation process and force you to do it again. And you wouldn't gain anymore power in the mean time."

"Right. And what is that power exactly?"

"It's vague. It seems to just...upgrade you. You get stronger, smarter, faster, more adept at magic. Think of it like D&D experience, except that you don't level up."

"Right." Airah looked at the crystal. "So, what now?"

"Let's read up a bit more and then hit the sack. Then tomorrow morning let's pull up a map. I feel like it'll be time for some exploration, don't you?"

"Sure. As long as you don't criticize my flying."

"No promises."

"Screw you."

"Ah! You wish!"

Airah made a rude gesture, which was awkward given the fact that a dragon's hand was very much not made for it, and they both laughed.

*****

Airah hummed as she flew through the air. Flying felt nice. Very nice even. And it was a nice change of pace. She liked reading, but even she liked doing something else from time to time. And she had some kind of urge to at least move around. Which was odd, because as far as she could remember it she could just plop down onto a couch and not move for hours. Probably a side effect of her reincarnation, now that she thought about it.

"Enjoying the flight?"

"I never was against flying. Neither were you as far as I remember. Besides, this feels more...intimate that a grav suit or a jetpack."

Stellyra, whose avatar was currently wearing both of these things, nodded.

"Makes sense, you're flying with your own body, not through machinery after all."

"Yeah. I could so without the aches though."

Stellyra chuckled. Turns out that having two fights in the same day, plus multiple crashes, took something of a toll, even on a great dragon, and Airah had been starting to feel it by the time bedtime came around. A good night's rest had helped a lot -if anything had penetrated their cavern, it had clearly decided that attacking a great dragon was suicide-, but there were still some bothering her.

"Well hey, more motivation to improve."

"Right." Airah winced as her stomach growled. "Speaking of motivation, I believe my stomach is giving me some of its own. Shall we look for a meal?"

"I assume you're not considering going to town and buying some soup?"

"No. If we're going to live there, I think we need to at least know how to subsist. Besides, I could do with some meat. A lot of meat."

"That's what she sai-"

"Shut up!"

Stellyra laughed, but began looking around.

"How about there?"

Sarah moved her head slightly to get a better view, and nodded. There was some kind of wild herd of goats moving around, eating as much as they could in the gloom of the early morning. There was easily a dozen of them, and even if most got away they should at least make a decent meal.

"Alright! Let's lock espoils into attack position, and try to get some breakfast!"

"Just try not to crash into them. You want meat, not slurry, remember?"

Airah rolled her eyes, but didn't dignify the AI with a response, as she began her careful descent.

Whatever the goats usually had trying to eat them, a flying predator was not among them. None of them were watching the sky, all of their attention focused on watching the woods or stuff as much plant matter into their mouths as possible.

Which was why they froze in incomprehension as a vast shadow came over them. They looked up at Airah landed in a ground shaking thump, and barely had the time to start jumping back before she opened her mouth, and the flames took them.

"See? Perfect barbecue!"

"That's kind of overkill."

"What are you talking about? Peel off the outer layers, and the flesh underneath should be good!"

"I mean the forest!" Said the AI, exasperated, as she gestured at the burning treeline.

"Oh." Airah rolled her eyes. "It'll burn itself out."

*****

" 'It'll burn itself out', eh?"

"Look, if I had known how much it would spread, I wouldn't have done it, happy now?"

Stellyra still looked vaguely furious, but she sighed, and nodded.

"Well, if nothing else it at least shook up the wildlife." She gestured at the animals fleeing the forest fire. "There's a ton of stuff in there."

"Yep." Airah slightly adjusted her course by tilting to the side. She was really getting the hang of flying. She hadn't even crashed when taking off this time! "Lots of stuff we don't know too. Did you see those beaver things? They were the size of a freaking lion!"

"Yeah, and- Wait, are those people?"

Airah frowned, and looked down. Indeed, there was what looked like a party of people running away from the forest fire as fervently as any animal.

"Ah, fuck, I thought we would be far enough from the town."

"Well, Lenna did say there were satellite villages. And hunting parties can have a pretty wide operational radius if you're willing to camp out into the wild."

"Right. Let's say hello. Least we can do is try to help them out of this mess."

"Weren't we trying to keep a low profile?"

Airah winced.

"Yeah. But I swore to protect the innocent. And I'm not going to let those poor bastards die because I couldn't bother controlling myself."

"Well, you're the captain!"

It only took a minute to adjust course, and for Airah to come down directly in the path of the fleeing humans.

Airah landed, having focused her whole attention on the procedure to avoid just making a fool of herself, and she looked up, preparing to speak up, when she froze.

She suddenly realized she had made several wrong assumptions.

The first one, was that she'd assumed a party of human wouldn't just start screaming incoherently and firing arrows at her when she landed in front of them.

The other one was that she'd planned on a party of hunters, not a group of heavily armed bandits.

"OH SHIT! ITS REAL! THE DRAGON IS REAL! RALLY MEN! TO ME!" Shouted what appeared to be their leader.

Airah opened her mouth to protest, or at least try to communicate, but roared in pain as an arrow flew straight into the roof of her mouth.

She felt the iron tip drive into her flesh, and warm blood flow down onto her tongue, and suddenly she wasn't interested in diplomacy anymore.

She looked up at the bandits, who had rallied after her roar of pain, and were currently coalescing into something resembling a coherent combat formation.

Screw rescuing them from the flame. She was going to send them in screaming.

Another couple of arrows struck her, and she surged forward.

The first bandit tried to raised his sword, to parry or strike her she didn't bother considering as she simply swatted him aside. He flew through the air and was promptly impaled on a sizeable tree branch. He twitched for a few seconds, before laying still, clearly dead.

Airah felt a sudden surge of warmth from her soul crystal, and frowned, but couldn't dwell on the phenomena further as the bandits suddenly charged her.

It was remarkably foolhardy of them...but then again, they were trapped between her and the inferno, and they had a remote chance of getting through her.

Emphasis on 'remote'.

She started swatting them aside one by one, but quickly the bandits learned, and began to dodge out of the way. She smiled internally, and feinted an attack on one of the more skilled bandits. He promptly dodged, and began drawing his sword for a strike...which was when she darted her head forward, and bit his midsection.

She raised his struggling, screaming body in the air as she shook him, before biting down on him with all of her strength.

The makeshift armor he wore held for a second, before yielding under jaws that could crush stone into gravel, and the screams ended in a gurgle as she effectively cut him in half.

Airah spat out the mangled corpse, and looked at the remaining bandits.

One of them clearly decided that this wasn't worth it, and threw down his weapons to run away. Airah did a lazy flick of her tail, and he fell to the ground, hit with enough force to stun a horse. Still, it wasn't enough to kill him, and she needed someone to interrogate later. There was only so much she could learn from books and willing conversation partners after all.

The rest of the bandits clumped up around their leader, and Airah shrugged, opening her mouth to incinerate them...which turned out to be precisely what the leader was waiting for.

She screamed in agony as the arrow hit the inside of her mouth. Except that this time it was no ordinary projectile, and she felt her mouth burn as something like acid ate through her flesh.

She looked back down at the bandits, and this time there was only rage in her eyes. She started moving forward, and they braced for her charge...and at the last second she turned to her side, and rolled over them. Literally.

Their screams were over in an instant as several dozen tons of dragon crushed them into the ground. Most of their weapons dug into her flesh at least a bit, but at this point she was beyond caring. She could still feel her palate slowly coming apart from whatever shit the bastard had coated his arrows with, and she breathed fire.

The flames incinerated whatever poison or acid had been there, and the molten metal of the arrowheads poured out of the wound, not even harming her flesh in the slightest. The shafts were completely destroyed however.

She spat out the metal, and looked at the crushed bodies, as well as the still breathing bandit while she felt the top of her mouth with her tongue. The bleeding had already stopped, and she could feel her flesh starting to knit together. Damn, dragons healed quickly. She idly wondered if it was just a surface system, and the deeper part of the wounds would take longer to actually heal, before filing it as something to verify later. The forest fire was still spreading after all, and while she was fireproof, the bandits and their possessions were not.

"Well, that didn't got as planned."

"Yeah." Said Stellyra, stepping over the mass of crushed bodies. The AI had been instrumental in her victory, constantly supplying information and potential vectors of attack. She wasn't omniscient -she hadn't seen the arrow coming-, but she was learning very fast the intricacies of dragon combat. Notably that Airah was the size of a battle tank, and as long as her hits connected the squishy meatbags wouldn't survive if she didn't want them to. "So...do we loot them?"

Airah looked at the bodies...and shrugged.

"Might as well. It'll get burned down otherwise." She turned human again, and got to work. Good thing she'd brought the bag of holding with her!