Sorry for missing yesterday chapter release was traveling.
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In the Dragon Eyrie where this plane bent to draconic dominion, and where the first of flight, fire, and sovereignty had been written in scale and claw. Dragons reigned from on high. Vast Peaks of obsidian, starstone, and crystallized metal rose like the spines of Creation, each crowned with perches fit for beings whose shadows could eclipse continents. From these heights, Great Dragons watched over creation not as caretakers, but as apex predators. When they stirred, civilizations trembled. When they descended, histories of worlds ended.
The Eyrie was their crossroads. From here, Dragons launched themselves into the Multiverse below, wings slicing through dimensional strata as easily as air.
They hunted across worlds; sometimes for sustenance, sometimes for treasures, sometimes for enemies old enough that even stars remembered their names. Entire realms recorded draconic descents as apocalyptic events, mistaking necessity for malice, predation for judgment.
The White Dragon Elder lay coiled upon a vast obsidian dais, his body stretching for leagues, scales like overlapping plates of marble stone. Each breath caused the air itself to ripple, light bending and refracting as if submerged in water.
Before him hovered the Scrying Pool. It was not water. It was a suspended liquid of fate like a mirror. Within it churned the image of the Nest below: hatchlings fought, biomes bleeding into one another, armies scattering like ants down below.
The White Elder watched in silence as the severed Immortal Dragon's head drifted across the Nest, its mane of grey white hair descended like a spider threads over reality. "Ah. So it had come to this." His eye each iris a galaxy in slow collapse narrowed slightly.
"This has become troublesome," he rumbled. The Nest he had been overseeing had crossed the line. There existed a moment in every Nest's lifespan an invisible threshold, difficult to quantify where the level of violence and escalation ceased to be organic and worthwhile becoming pathological. Where difficulty no longer had any meaning, where the environment no longer became a place suitable for the growth of the young hatchlings. This was that moment. Protocol allowed him to intervene. Protocol allowed him to end it.
The White Elder lifted one talon, claws each the length of a skyscraper, hovering above a sigil etched into the obsidian floor. A single press would collapse the dimensional lattice holding the Nest together. Space would fold. Time would unravel. Survivors would be forcibly ejected into the Peaks. Threats would be neutralized and the Nest would be cauterized for them to start all over with it.
The Nest would be recorded as Nonviable. A failure. He hesitated because he had seen far worse and heard of much worse fates to other Nests in the past. His mind drifted, ancient memories unfolding in recollection.
There had been a Nest once overseen by a Bronze Elder who had grown… too curious for his own good. He had carried out very dark experiments on the hatchlings in the Nest they oversaw once they had been caught they paid dearly with their life.
Another memory surfaced. A Nest, where a clutch of royal hatchlings had been devoured by an upstart tyrant-drake who ascended. Their parents had descended personally. Protocol shattered. The sky burned for decades in the Nest due to their wrath.
They paid dearly as a Sovereign Dragon took insult to Great dragons lowering themselves to slay a young hatchling. Two Dragon Lords died. One Queen was crippled. The Nest imploded under collateral causality.
Then there was a Nest where something buried from the War with the Dino had been unearthed by accident. A weapon that should not have existed within a hatchling environment. They used it. Of course they did. The Nest burned so brightly that its destruction registered as a supernova above in the peaks.
The White Elder had seen and heard of many failures. Compared to those? This Nest was merely being… dramatic. He lowered his talon. Not yet. He did not like that an old participant he had watched rise in the Nest come again.
Worse he could see someone had taken control of him. He wasn't sure if it was his mother and he did not want to offend her if it was. If not, the old Matron would set things right with the person that possessed her beloved son.
He watched as the severed head drifted across his Pool, its presence warping the karmic balance. The puppeted armies fanned out across biomes, threads taut, obedient. He saw it as a reckless play and very dangerous but not unprecedented.
His gaze shifted and so did the pool in answer. Within the pool, a lone figure moved bloodied, beaten but still standing. Artorius.
A hatchling who by all classification had barely any legitimacy. He looked into his ancestry and came out short, it was as if he came out of nowhere. He was also a dragon without scales, malformed by most standards. And yet the Nest was really in most of this troubles due to him.
Just then presence appeared. One by one, other figures appeared around him, each a figure of equal magnitude. The Overseers were convening. In total seven elders appeared. A quorum.
They gathered around the White Elder's pool, gazes drifting downward into the mayhem. "Well, things don't seem to be going well in your Nest," one said dryly.
Another peered down, studying what was going on, "Immortal remains weaponized. The presence of two confirmed True dragons." He paused. "Quite impressive."
One chuckled. "At least your hatchlings are ambitious. They are thinking about world conquest like a true dragon should, unlike mine who think so small minded. They are still fighting over different biomes."
"Yeah it is the same for all of us, our Nest are not getting the same action as old Whitey is getting here. He is really living it up. It's just the same old hierarchies going on, nobles ruling most biomes of any significance, royals lording over them, and imperial dragons reigning on high with iron fists."
"True and it has been some time since a true dragon has appeared who took over a whole Nest. And now you have two in one who somehow seemed to be working together."
The dragons chatted together, their job can get boring at times, they have seen this same dance and game hundreds if not a thousand times before. Hatchlings that can serve the dangers in the Nest and hit level 50, they ascend out of the Nest becoming no longer hatchlings, dragon babies, but young adults who get introduced to dragon society proper in the Dragon Peaks.
One of the Elders snorted. "I give it some time before this Nest collapses. This is not feasible."
"Like I said we should ban any Sires from taking control of their children and interfering in the Nest that way. It gives them and those beyond an unfair advantage," an old head commented.
"As if they would allow it," a dragon shook its head sadly. "This is how they keep their children on top and make it impossible for any to usurp them."
The Overseers do their best to tweak the rules and guidelines to make sure things don't turn out those ways before in failed experiments. But eventually there would be something that always goes spectacularly and it would be a learning lesson for them.
The White Elder remained silent. The others noticed. "You're quiet," one observed. "Considering pulling the plug?"
"I considered it," the White Elder admitted. A hush fell.
"And?" an elder dragon asked.
He gestured to the pool. "Look closer." They did at the severed head, two great immortal blooded, the armies gathering and marching, of dragons hiding and running.
One dragon frowned. "What exactly are you trying to show us?"
The White Elder's gaze sharpened. "Look at that one." They followed his stare and Artorius appeared again. Bleeding. Cornered. Still moving.
"Ah, that one." one said slowly. "The troublemaker." Recognition flickered among them as they have been watching for a while with the White dragon elder. "The scaleless anomaly." One dragon;s eyes glowed as data scrolled across his scales, using one of his abilities. "He is responsible for fifty-six percent of destabilizing events within your Nest."
"seventy-one," the White Elder corrected. "If you count secondary effects."
A pause. Then one laughed, deep and amused. "You're fond of him."
"I am interested," the White Elder replied. He didn't mention that someone else far beyond him was also curious about him
An Elder tilted her head. "Do you believe he will overcome these obstacles?" Silence. The Overseers exchanged looks.
"He has surprised me a lot so far. Maybe he can surprise me one more time." With that the Overseers turned to watch what was unfolding in the Nest below.
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The Nest no longer felt like a battlefield. It felt like a prison.
Artorius moved through the biomes in silence, cloak drawn tight around battered armor, wings folded and masked beneath layered illusion. The land itself watched him now. Not metaphorically but literally. The air hummed with faint karmic resonance, invisible threads brushing against his skin like spider silk, recoiling when they failed to latch.
Everywhere he went, eyes were looking for him. Not just dragon eyes, those at least could be seen. No, worse than that it was the land that had turned traitor. Thanks to his dragon eyes he could see everything was getting puppetted by red threads. Trees with veins of glowing red filaments beneath bark. Clouds that drifted just a little too slowly, always circling around. Pools of water that reflected scenes that they had seen.
The possessed Karma Dragon did not just send soldiers everywhere. His awareness was also everywhere. Artorius knew this was just a fraction of this immortal dragon's power. All at once it took over most of the Nest.
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/16747829861730588/
Artorius crouched atop a shattered ridge of bone, peering down into what had once been a bustling convergence biome. Now it was silent. Paths lay abandoned. Towers stood dark. A banner once imperial blue hung from a spire, torn and stained, now threaded through with crimson strand that twitched faintly in the air.
A patrol passed below. They moved in perfect unison. Dozens of dragons, lesser and greater descendants, marched as one without speaking, eyes dull, scales threaded with thin red lines that ran back toward the sky like puppet strings. Each carried the same rhythm. The same breath. The same will.
The severed head's hair had reached everywhere. Artorius turned away before he could be sighted. He had seen enough of what obedience looked like under karmic domination. It was not loyalty. It was not fear. It was the suppression of all personality.
He had continued on his way to his mission.
Across the Nest, quiet ripples moved. Not the thunder of wings. Not the clash of armies or the flare of banners raised in open challenge. These ripples were softer… more dangerous. They slid through forgotten channels, along ancestral bonds, through old pacts etched into blood and scale long before.
It was a message. Fragments of intent carried by breathless couriers, encoded roars, sympathetic resonance between draconic bloodlines. Favors called in. Friendships and deals used. Dormant instincts stirred. Across biomes and borders, a single meaning surfaced again and again, simple and unadorned: Unite. Stand together. Fight before there is no Nest left to fight for.
The Nest itself seemed to listen. Stormfronts shifted subtly. Old Forest stirred awake. Mountains trembled in anticipation. In the seas, currents altered their course. The vast living structure of the Nest, this crucible where hatchlings were meant to struggle, grow, ascend felt the pressure building toward something final.
Already, Artorius' forces were moving. They did not march. They did not gather in great visible hosts. That would have been suicide in a Nest that now had eyes everywhere with each path being patrolled by the puppeted forces of the possessed Karma Dragon.
Instead, they prepared deep underground where the Karma dragon's gaze thinned. Ouroboros revealed a long forgotten or very under-utilized feature of the Nest. The deep tunnels that connect and criss-crossed all over the different biomes.