Aquiline tried to keep his stride smooth, but the sounds of pain did not cease from Nona's unconscious lips. Never in his short life did he want to fly more than he did at this moment. Vowing to himself that he would correct this in the future he looked for signs of others who could heal.
Several times the snakes tried attacking but Aquiline did not waste time fighting and kept barreling through. Often he would sustain bites on his legs and he could feel the poison spreading slowly through his body. Being a griffin he had some control of mana and sent it to keep the poison slow despite how hard his heart was pumping.
He ran for hours covering several miles when he started to see the trails in the tall grass indicating something had walked through it often. Hedging his bets he followed it. The poison was already in his main body and he knew he did not have long before what little magic he had could not suppress it.
Cresting a small hill he saw a village with hide tents and beings walking on two legs. He tried picking up the pace in excitement, but instead found his vision going dark. Drawing in a lung full of air Aquiline let out the loudest screech of his life. The last thing he heard was the blood curdling scream of Nona as Aquiline fell to the ground.
****
Nona found himself back in his memory palace with its bare buildings. He was aware of the pain his physical body felt. Here it was like bright red spikes that pierced mental paradise.
"This pain might be a good defense for others who would want to enter your mind." The mental doppelganger said as it appeared out of thin air.
"You don't say." replied the real Nona rolling his eyes.
"Easy there. No need for sarcasm I am only here to help guide you along the mental path of becoming a true dragon."
"And how exactly is this helping me become a real dragon?"
"Well any being that can be mentally invaded isn't exactly scary even to a novice mage. If anyone ever gets in your head than any move or spell you think of will be known to them just as you think it."
Nona considered what was said and found it hard to argue against. One of the scraps of a story he read was a hero bemoaning is archnemesis' ability to read minds. That was all that was on the scroll so Nona found it boring.
Heeding that advice Nona began to focus on gathering the pain together caused it to stop piercing through his mental palace and instead it started flowering like a vine along the mental ground. Letting that suffice for now he turned his attention back to the doppelganger. "Well if I'm going to build this place from a palace to a fortress I need to know how big it is and the general layout."
"The size varies from being to being. It depends on their willpower and mental capacity."
"Aren't those two things the same?" Nona interrupts.
"No." the clone rolls its eyes, "Mental capacity is the amount of information one can store where willpower is the ability to resist or inactive a mental force. Mental capacity is required for building where willpower is needed for expansion."
"So the more willpower I have the bigger it is. What about the general shape?"
"Think of it as a disk with a dome on top. The edge is where it's thinnest and the center tallest. If things ar to tall at the edge than others can interact with it freely regardless of the defenses you put in place."
"OK so I wouldn't want the most harmful defenses on the edge." Nona became thoughtful. "So what is the easiest way to move around?"
"Simply envision where you want to go and you will be there. The same can be said for anything you want built."
Nona nodded before a plan took shape. He called forth all the sensations of boredom he had ever encountered including the lecture he had just got and spread it around the edge like a fog. Next, he gathered up all the pain vines and put them just behind the fog. He added in all the other times he felt pain and at the last minute decided to sprinkle it with the loneliness he felt growing up. Looking at what he created he felt satisfied with the blood red vines with the black rose budding from them.
"That should be enough for one sitting. Doing to much at once can make it difficult to retain. Now go to sleep and send all the pain you feel from this blunder to the flowers it will help them grow."
Those words sent Nona into the peaceful darkness of slumber. Jabs of pain threatened to wake him. Just before they did Nona was able to redirect them and avoid most of it.
****
Nona awoke to a cool sensation on his forehead. Opening his eyes he saw a young female larvae with blonde hair and blue eyes replacing the cloth on his head.
"Grandma he is awake!"
Nona tried to turn his head but he realized he was completely bandaged stiff so he could not move. There was a fog in his head making his thoughts sluggish. At first he thought it was the fog he created before dismissing it since it was made of boredom and this was something else. Thinking of that fog he committed this new feeling to memory for later use.
As he was processing all of this a blue woman with a slightly lighter shade of blue eyes. Her hair was white like the foam on the waves and moved in a similar fashion. "OK now lad take it easy. You and your griffin took quite a beating getting here. Though yours seem more self inflicted than his. Care to explain why your leg was nearly burned off and your griffin was so poisoned that he is still nearly dead." Her voice was like a light rain fall and had a calming effect on Nona.
"I will share that story with you, but first where am I and who are you?" Nona gets out breathlessly.
"You are in a nomadic genasi village, and I am Cala the village healer."