The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

Legion clucked in reproof, and sighed despite themselves. Shvaughn laughed in the distance, and left them to their work with the shadow of a mental kiss.

Such a clever woman, they thought, as they Earthjumped ten miles straight down, and emerged out of the side of the Felldeep cavern beneath Illinois.

This particular cavern was thirty miles long, twenty-four miles at its widest, and reached nearly a mile high in the middle. It absolutely could not exist by physics, and at this depth should have been far too hot for anything mortal and organic to live.

The sky was bright with a combination of white-hot rock and glowing crystals, giving an impression of multiple distant suns and streaks of light flowing between them. The illumination cycled on a regular pattern that basically exactly matched the illumination above.

The vegetation here had mostly died out before the last Ice Age, or perhaps had evolved directly out of such things. The air was warm and wet, thick with the smell of composting materials, and alive with the sounds of a jungle, if subtly different.

There was a lot more reptilian life down here, after all.

The first cavern had been further east, with spurs that had extended up under Detroit. The things that had come up higher from there had mostly been Fey or Elemental spirits of one kind or another, occasionally bringing some magical beast or another with them as battle partners or slaves.

Given how savagely they attacked, they weren’t allowed to go home. They certainly had not been aware of the power of modern firearms.

Thus, one end of that cavern had been dominated by the Earth-based creatures and their homes of organically shaped stones and many stands of crystals, ores spread like paint through the walls and occasionally brought forth and refined into attractive sculptures intrinsically worthy a great deal of goldweight, even before being turned into elemental art.

Exploration-by-force teams would count the area a bonanza for mining, no doubt, and drive off everything to claim it for themselves.

The major threat to the Fey and spirits were dinosaurs wandering out of the plains and jungles nearby. Well, they were a threat if they were ridden by yuan-ti.

Legion was not happy to see the serpent-men here. Even today, nearly eighty years after the Shroud came, yuan-ti were basically killed at birth. Even the Heavenly Churches didn’t speak out against the practice, as the Angelos had informed them long ago that the yuan-ti were an ancient demonic mutation of the human species, born to be Evil, and lacking Free Will. Not a single human who had been transformed into a serpent-folk had proven to be anything other than Evil, and even newly born children had traces of it in their Auras.

It was absolutely horrible, but it was what it was. The blame lay on the progenitors of the yuan-ti, not on humanity itself, which had no way to reverse the Cursed effect.

The birth of a yuan-ti generally meant doom for any chance of having a family, as the couple involved could not risk having another... and not many people would want to try with someone who had already sired a yuan-ti. Thus the evil of the Curse was magnified, as the parents suffered for the birth as well.

Scalefolk were just another bane upon humanity. The tales of the Angelos and Windgraf Mochtal held precious little positive things to say for any of the scaled or reptilian races.

Legion had followed the trail of the yuan-ti back to the connection to the next chamber, and there found the temple fortress they used as a base. The serpentfolk rode Charmed and Dominated dinosaurs of the saurial type, frilled and with colorful scales in various sizes, with herbivorous ones being used for lower classes, messengers, and routine use, while predatory versions were obviously for the important riders and military.

It was noteworthy that they weren’t using any form of pure pteranodon or somesuch for a riding beast... at least, not without magical saddles to completely remove the rider’s weight. Obviously the dinosaurs were not magical fliers.

It was also obvious that while they had access to a good water supply and food supply, there had to be some form of conflict going on. Records of yuan-ti indicated that they were of genius-level intelligence, and they all had innate magical powers they were quite willing to use. Given that and their natural toughness, they should have easily been able to dominate this area... but they didn’t.

They also had very few sauropods laboring for them, always smaller ones as packbeasts.

Something was keeping their numbers in check, and given how the yuan-ti had only fanned out in hunting parties, always wary, it was good at its job.

Legion hadn’t discovered what that was, but just reporting the existence of the yuan-ti meant that somebody would be dispatched to take care of them. Yes, they could have done it, and probably fairly easily... although they had the feeling there were some dangerous secrets hidden inside the sprawling domain of their temple-fortress, given the demonic Aura about it.

If there was a Pact Patron within, wouldn’t that be foul luck...

There were other airborne dinosaurs here, and they kept a wary distance from Legion’s wings and odd appearance. The pteros could probably sense Legion’s draconic Bloodline, too, and didn’t want to test them.

They were wondering if more of the Mahars were around, who would certainly have conflicts of some sort with the arrogant and domineering yuan-ti. Conflicts between them could certainly explain the numbers of the yuan-ti, although Legion didn’t have a high opinion of the Mahars’ intelligence. More than likely, once they met the yuan-ti would have taken them over outright, or killed them off entirely unless their numbers were overwhelming.

A loud roar of challenge alerted them to something, and the air roiled about them as some sort of Druidic magic began to take effect.

They absentmindedly sent a shot of Wrath into the magic, and tore it apart with skill and ease. Neutralizing enemy spellcasters was one of the primary defenses against the Powered, and if you had the ability and weren’t good at it, you were an idiot.

Having Traveler’s insane Caster Level to practice against helped, too.

X100 vision from their Mask of Clarity located the source of the roar and the magic, the Caster having shut up as they instantly took down the windstorm that had been starting to form, probably to bombard them with lightning and ice as follow-ups.

Was that a dinosaur?

The saurial was the size of a T-rex, with the large head and powerful jaws. The resemblance there ended, because its frills resembled feathers as they were standing up and spread out in patterns of orange and red and black, tipped with emerald green.

They Rode the Light as they dove down, accelerating to break the sound barrier with a crack and backwash of air fanning about them, then snapped their wings wide and came right to a halt from nigh on full speed to less than twenty meters from the colorful dinosaur, not even bothering with Featherweight to take the strain.

The dinosaur’s eyes widened in shock at the display of power. Legion’s wings should have either torn away or broken like twigs, breaking their momentum like that, and instead the swirling, colorful pinions held them up effortlessly, clearly not exerting themselves at all.

They were perfectly aware that the celestial golden patterns on the black and crimson dragon wings, decorated with off-colored spirals, scales, and spikes in multiple patterns from succubi and marilith, were extremely eye-catching and distracting, and waited politely for the dinosaur to look them all over. This was doubly true for their tails, which were in fox-style, non-threatening form.

They always felt much more comfortable with their tails out now.

They also noticed that the dinosaur was wearing a harness of scales and leather, with purses and bags and things hanging from it in reach of its relatively short forearms... and many that were not.

Her gaze wandered over to the undergrowth, and the creatures there froze as they realized they had been spotted.

“Good evening to the Elder of the Cavern. I am Legion. Whom do I have the distinction of addressing?” they asked in Draconic, the default language for pretty much anything scaled, as Human was for, well, humans.

They could tell the saurial was feeling threatened, but the tone they used was neutral, although superior, because they were. The saurial was not much of a danger to them. From here, they could probably throw it into the ceiling a mile above if they were of a mind to.

The saurial seemed to realize this, and dipped its fanged maw nearly to the ground in a gesture of submission. “A great and mighty Elder has come to visit Felderjaw’s territory!” the dinosaur pronounced in a deep and powerful voice that didn’t impress one with a draconic Bloodline at all. Legion belatedly noticed it was female, the draft having been blowing in the other direction. “I humbly ask what Elder Legion is doing here,” the Feathered-rex saurial Druid asked directly, staring at Legion and the threat they represented.

“Merely passing through and looking for threats to the outer world, from which I have come.” They ignored the shock in the Felderjaw’s eyes at the claim. “The serpentfolk, for instance.” Legion inclined their head in that direction, and the Feathered-Rex turned her long head that way as well, slitted eyes narrowing slightly.

“A blight on all caverns, the slinking demon snakes, Elder Legion,” the dinosaur fairly spat in agreement, muscular counterbalancing tail twitching slightly. “Wait... you said you came from the Outer World?” Her head snapped back in alarm.

Legion held out her hand for the Holo to manifest. Since they were now able to access Sorcery through their Draconic Bloodline, that meant very useful Cantrips. It meant they didn’t need a Vaccine for minor illusions or anything now, and used Markchat almost exclusively for communicating with Gregori-gori now. “This cavern is located far below the Outer World. The Hollow World below is much farther away, although we have been informed there are numerous connections between it and the Felldeep Caverns.” They scaled the illusions of the cavern and the distance between them appropriately. Since the Hollow World had to be in another adjacent dimensional space and not really at the heart of the world, physical distance was actually not that important.

The F-rex started at the display of the Shrouded World without, the gray of the Haze contrasting with the open blue sky of day and the stars of night. This contrasted directly with the spiraling layers of clouds and endless angry sun of the Hollow World.

“The Great Eyes and the Islands of the Sky!” Felderjaws burst out. Her riders, a trio of ape-like humanoids with straight fur, rough leather garments to hold pouches of their own, and crude spears clutched in hands, had wandered out of hiding to stare more closely at the Holograms that Legion had brought up. “The Sparkling Sea of Darkness! The Eye in the Blue!” The F-Rex sounded flabbergasted and amazed.

“Old stories to your kind, Elder Felderjaws?” Legion asked politely.

The F-Rex bobbed urgently. “None of the Elders now living have ever seen either of these things, Elder Legion!” she admitted quickly, excited and agitated. “They come to us only in distant tales and legends!” The massive head craned back to stare at the dark sky cut by veins of white-hot stone and crystals, giving them their light. “Past the heat of the sky?” she asked, astounded.

“Yes. If you would like to come visit us, that can probably be arranged, although the surface world is not very friendly in terms of weather to the Scaled,” Legion stated, eying the F-Rex’s verdant green Aura curiously. “I will directly say that you are actually very close to the surface world, as these things go.”

The Holo moved to center on them, then expanded north and east, through the dimensions recorded in The Map and now filled in with Legion’s own observations. The fortress-city of the serpentmen scrolled by, drawing hisses of hate from those present, and then into the cavern beyond, where jungle gave way to shadowed plains, the lithic realm of the geoic beings there, and then the long and winding, circuitous route and climb through minor caves, caverns, and tunnels, up to the surface world and the great wall Heavenbound Hall had built across the surface access into the salt mines beneath Detroit there.

Hooting howls and gibbers broke out among the ape-men as they saw this, pointing and gesticulating excitedly. They calmed down when Felderjaw grunted at them, but their eyes were still excited.