"You Fire Dragons have an entire clan behind you. She is alone and doesn't want to involve her brother in a conflict with the Council or the Kingdom." "You have a point." Erghak sighed. "I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, accompany Lith in delivering the Eyes. I have something that might help Tista in the short term. Erghak out." Silence fell into the room, interrupted solely by the rhythmical heavy breathing of the Wight. "I have a question." Nyka said. "I know that the owner of one of the pieces of Menadion Set can authorize other people to use it, but how are the Fire Dragons supposed to get the authorization? Mom is unreliable at best, and I can't move during the day." "Do you trust Lith, child?" Menadion asked. "With my life. Why?" "Then give me the Eyes." The First Ruler of the Flames extended her hand. Nyka took the artifact off Kalla's snout and handed it to Menadion. "Wait." Solus stopped them. "Isn't your mother going to get angry when she wakes up?" "Not until she remembers about the deal, no." The Vampire chuckled. "Also, she was due to a break from her experiments and long-overdue physical training. This is actually a blessing in disguise. Nok and I can have Mom all to ourselves for six months straight!" "Do it before she wakes up!" Solus jumped with joy for her friend. Menadion removed the imprint on the Eyes with Creation Magic, and Lith replaced it with his own. "Do you want to come with us, Ripha?" Lith accessed the tower's Warping Mirror to move to the mana geyser closer to the coordinates of Erghak's lair. "With pleasure." She nodded. "I always loved Fire Dragons. They are great artisans. They purify enchanted metals like few others and craft many masterpieces each generation. Yet I doubt the feeling would be mutual were they to know about my Thievery." "What's a Thievery?" Nyka asked. "Nothing. You better stay here, child." Menadion replied too quickly not to sound suspicious. "Let's go." The tower Warped away, leaving the flabbergasted vampire and the sleeping Wight behind. "The Empire again and the Valley of Life at that." Lith sighed. "I'm sorry for your friend, child." Menadion needed to float to pat Lith's shoulder. "Dragons are born from Leegaain, and this is his turf. It's only natural they live here." "Mom is right." Solus hadn't spent much time with the late Father of Fire, but she knew how much he meant to Lith. "I bet Erghak lives in a volcano as well. You heard his talk about seizing mines." She tried to change the topic, hoping it would take Lith's mind off his dead friend. "I don't take losing bets. Look there." The Watchtower floor had spotted another mana geyser in the distance whose coordinates matched those of Erghak's lair. The recovery of the Ears and Solus regaining the deep violet core had greatly enhanced the range of the Watchtower, but that wasn't the only reason Lith had found two mana geysers so close to each other. There were actually many more than two, each spaced a little more than a hundred kilometers (63 miles) from the rest. The Valley of Life was located over a fault that ran deep into Mogar and bled magma from many open wounds in the planet's crust. The molten rocks carried more than fire, they also transported undercurrents of precious metals that gurgled straight from Mogar's depths. For some reason, the world energy flowed right along, carried straight from the mystery of Mogar's core. Lith had never seen so many geysers so close, and it took him a while to understand why he had failed to notice them during his previous visits. "Fuck me sideways." He muttered in amazement. The vast majority of the mana geysers were inhabited by dozens of powerful Divine Beasts' energy signatures and cloaked by vast arrays of rare power. If not for the tower's upgrade and the Ears, the skill of the Fire Dragons was more than enough to fool the Eyes. "Well said." Menadion nodded. "I always admired your gift for brevity." "And I can see why Fire Dragons have no money problems!" Solus grunted in annoyance. "They have monopolized the region. There is an army of them, and the arrays of their lairs are interconnected to form a weapon of mass destruction greater than the sum of its single parts. "The adults can fight freely, knowing that their younglings are safe and cover their backs with the power of the magical formations!" "As I said, I love Fire Dragons." Menadion said. "And Lith said all of that with just three words." "I wish I were born a Fire Dragon." Lith sighed in envy. "Me too." Seven hundred years had passed, but Menadion was still not over her bitterness. The group flew to the coordinates in a straight line, pretending not to know about the nearby lairs. Once Lith activated the magical equivalent of a doorbell, a Warping Array brought him inside. 'Pride and Paranoia!' He thought. 'Erghak didn't show me the entrance, and we have no idea how deep we are or what the layout of his lair is. We only know what he wants us to know. Even Spirit Steps can't bring us back here once we leave.' "Welcome to my humble abode." The patriarch waved at the room, which was anything but. Lith could tell he had been transported into an ample cave at least 100 meters (330') high and 400 (1,320') across. Yet long piles of gold ingots had been used as bricks to form walls that separated the cave into different rooms. The one Erghak had brought them to was furnished for beings the size of a human. It would have been cramped for a Dragon, but it was spacious for smaller creatures. A long, rectangular mahogany table was surrounded by many fine redwood chairs, and they were all taken. Paintings depicting the exploits of the Fire Dragon bloodline and display cases filled with magical wonders were lined against the four walls. The crystal of the cases was slightly dull, as if Lith was looking through a thin mist. "No offense, but I know you carry the Eyes of Menadion." Erghak answered the silent question. "That's standard procedure. It stops the Dragon Eyes of my guests from peeking at my secrets. I trust it works on you, too." "It does." Lith clicked his teeth in annoyance. The energy signature of the mist ebbed and flowed, ever shifting and making it impossible for the Eyes to filter it out. "No offense either, but who are all these people?" Lith turned from the display cases to his hosts. "I thought it would be just the two of us. Is this an ambush?" "A reasonable but wrong assumption." The Fire Wyrm was in his human form and raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I just summoned all those who will participate in our research to save us time and trouble." Erghak looked like a handsome man in his mid-twenties. He had flaming red hair with shades of gold-yellow, dusk-red, and midnight-black. He was as tall as Lith not to have to look up or down on him. He had thought about taking Menadion's height to honor her presence, but had dismissed the idea, afraid she would consider the gesture a mockery of her short stature.