Magma Dragon's Heir

19th of Season of Earth, 59th year of the 32nd cycle

Newt walked the street in a daze. The stench of death and decay from merely two days ago was gone, replaced by the freshness of the jungle air tinged with iodine and salt brought by the sea breeze. Like Rex and Rose had already mentioned, the streets were exactly the same as they once were, recreated from the champions' prodigious memory, using their even more astonishing powers.

Less than a year ago, the street Newt walked was a ruined battleground. Even the path Newt walked from the airport was the same as he remembered. No uprooted trees, nor anything else amiss. It was as if the bloody conflict had never happened.

The faces in the outer students' district were fewer, different, and younger. Possibly more hopeful than they should've been. Or perhaps that was Newt projecting his dark mood.

Newt just wandered aimlessly, recalling how someone's blood splashed the pristine clean stone, or how a cultist cleaved the flagstones when they missed him, but the flagstone was whole, and the cultist was long dead.

"Sir Salamandra, Champion Alabaster is expecting you at her residence," an outer student, a completely unfamiliar face, approached Newt.

"Thanks." Newt nodded and turned around, heading for the housing reserved for champions.

Newt reached the white mansion that bordered on being a palace and knocked on the door.

An unfamiliar woman, seemingly in late thirties, opened the door.

"Greetings, Sir Salamandra. I am Violetcloud. Please come in. Your master is expecting you."

The fourth realm overseer kept her voice cheerful, her smile friendly, but Newt's chest tightened. It was his first time seeing her, and from chats with his senior sisters, he knew their master only employed Overseer Freshshine, who was a descendant of a former teammate of hers.

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Overseer Violetcloud."

The woman's smile grew more genuine at his polite greeting, and she led the way to Lady Alabaster's study.

"Lady, your ward has arrived," Violetcloud said and saw Newt into the chamber before leaving.

The door closed, and Newt found himself in a crushing embrace, then a gust from his master's sudden burst of speed blew his hair back.

"Thank heavens you're all right," Lady Alabaster whispered into Newt's shoulder.

He wanted to say the feeling was mutual, but words failed him, and he just nodded.

"I'm sorry I didn't join the expedition to your clan. I was away on order business, recruiting more outer students." Words flowed out of Lady Alabaster's mouth too quickly, as the woman hurried to explain herself. "How have you been? Do you have any news about your brother and sisters?"

Lady Alabaster released Newt to gaze into his eyes, but held his hands.

"I traveled with Greenbow and Emeraldstreak. Both were healthy the last time I saw them. I don't know about my elder brother; we got separated during the crash. What happened here? How is everyone?"

"Freshshine and Twinflower have perished, as did Chaplain Dreadwalker. Flameax lost an arm, but he's fine now. Longfang barely survived. Chaplains Thunderwing and Monsoon are fine. Who else do you know among the elders? Right, Woodhopper is alive, but miserable; her beast companion perished protecting her."

Lady Alabaster was nervous. She bit her lip and avoided Newt's gaze, looking everywhere but straight at him.

"I'm guessing you already know, but the Deeproot twins, Obsidian and Jasmine, have perished. You know about Roselilly, obviously. Goodair is alive, but she's quieter now, often brooding and staring into the distance. I advised her to visit a soother, but they told me she's not willing to open up yet. They said she would take years to bounce back, which is odd, considering how bouncy she usually is."

Lady Alabaster smirked, but the mirth never reached her eyes.

"I don't know if you had any friends amongst the outer students - we lost a lot of them, same with laborers and overseers. Most of them… the cultists outclassed them in battle."

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Lady Alabaster's words birthed a heavy silence. Her mind was locked on the horrible truths regarding the tragic event, but she could never voice them to a youth who had lost his friends.

Most laborers and outer students who had failed to reach the inner student status in the first ten to twenty years were in truth a burden to the order. Even the overseers were a needless drain on the resources, for few stood a chance to reach the fifth realm, let alone the sixth. Students at their realm were a resource countless times more valuable.

Orders kept such members for the sake of their descendants and any potential talent the future generations might have. A single champion who rose to the sixth realm among the descendants of those who had failed to reach the fifth was worth the upkeep of all others who failed in their parents' generation. Seventh realm awakened were a huge profit, and those of a higher realm an impossible gem mined against all odds.

The culling of lower realm members, especially those who already had sons and daughters, had done the order more good than harm, even with some talented individuals dying. The weak perished, the strong or lucky survived, freeing up resources for the fresh blood to replace them.

In less than fifty years, the order's lower realm awakened population would recover completely. The imperial commendation, combined with the associated glory and resources, would increase Explorer's Gate's standing, impacting the quality of new recruits, which Lady Alabaster had already witnessed during her recruitment mission.

Simultaneously, the lack of students would allow them to rightfully claim an increased number of young awakened while their rival organizations would have to swallow the injustice.

Games of politics and numbers played out in the background after the dreadful assault, and Lady Alabaster was one of the smallest pieces in the giant puzzle. What mattered was the loss of champions. Imperial law would protect Explorer's Gate's interests for a hundred years after the attack, but after that, contests and conflicts would start anew, and the order needed to recover as much strength as possible during the grace period.

With the extra resources, some champions were bound to advance, and hopefully, elite students would become champions. Newt in particular, she hoped would close the gap between them, hopefully even stand beside her as a peer in a hundred years. But those were dreams of the future.

"Could you tell me what happened to you?" Lady Alabaster asked as she returned to the present, motioning Newt to sit and sounding a chime to let her new attendant know she required tea.

Newt removed his spear, leaning it against the wall, and Lady Alabaster noticed the gesture along with its implications. She knew her student would not easily part from his weapon for a long while, and Newt was not the only one. The majority of battle-hardened survivors walked around armed.

They had dashed into hell unarmed once, it would not happen again.

Lady Alabaster listened in silence as Newt gave a much longer and more detailed account of his life since the tragedy. He focused on his two senior sisters. Emeraldstreak, Aura, and Newt were young, focused on sculpting their and advancing their realms more than on practical matters. They once believed that as long as one in the team knew enough survival skills they would be fine. How wrong they were.

Had Greenbow fallen with Sharprock and Sharpcut, Newt's group would have wandered considerably more, and that wasted time would have killed him. Had Dandelion found him an hour later, Newt's fate would have been sealed.

"Master, I believe all students need extensive wilderness survival training," Newt said in the middle of his telling.

"And they get it," Lady Alabaster said, a guilty look flashing in her eyes, "but not at random times. I understand you were frightened, but proper training takes more than a year. You have dipped your toes across several topics, but never deeply enough to master them, and yet, spreading your attention like that costs you precious time."

Violetcloud entered the room and served tea. Lady Alabaster used the distraction to let Newt consider her words.

"You are like a sapling, full of growth and life," she said after the servant left. "If we stunted a sapling's growth, freezing its roots, just to hang some apples for a year, it would damage the future tree, make it less than it could have been. Same with our growth, your realm is swelling, carried on by the tide of youth. Stopping that growth to teach you ultimately irrelevant skills is folly. Same for Emeraldstreak and Goodair. Greenbow and Sharprock are considerably older; the prime time of their growth has passed, and they had the time to learn a host of useful skills."

Lady Alabaster smiled to take the edge of her words. "To be honest, I believe that learning runic seals and how to fight with the spear are a waste of your time right now. You should solidify your realm, prepare for the next breakthrough."

Newt opened his mouth to speak, and Lady Alabaster thought to cut him off, but allowed him to speak. She wanted to hear his argument.

"Master, isn't it better to be prepared for incidents like this?"

Lady Alabaster smiled.

"Newstar, the demonic cults assault one organization every ten to twenty years on average. There are ten royal families, ten dukes below them, and close to a hundred large orders like ours. Let us say, the cultists only target the one hundred of us, and they don't; that means our turn is once in a thousand years on average. In those one thousand years, at least nineteen generations of students would waste a year of their time. The last year's incident was the first in our written history."

Newt didn't need to hear the entire speech. He understood what his master was saying. That one year might cost the majority of those students their ability to reach the third realm, some would not reach the fourth because of the wasted time, and it might even hamper those with potential for even higher realms.

Still, Newt listened. Lady Alabaster offered hard numbers based on the generations she had observed, and a thought crept into his mind.

To really ancient mageknights, people are just numbers.