RE:volt! Chapter 14: The Dragon Core
Ark sat in darkness breathing heavily and sweating profusely as he focused all his attention on his burning core.
His body was on fire, literally, but not with flames that were visible to the naked eye but from the mana that was burning him alive from the inside out, leaking out of his wounds with his flesh sizzling.
"Focus. Feel the energy nestled within you and compress it!" Irelix directed, the dragon standing over Ark and assisting him in controlling the near uncontrollable vortex of power.
"You're being oddly helpful for once." Ark grimaced as he did as told.
"If you die, I die, monkey. Now focus!"
"I am!" Ark spat.
"If you were, you wouldn't be talking back and would have already succeeded!"
"It's a lot harder than it looks lizard." Ark seethed, his brow furrowing as he tried to contain the energy from exploding and blowing the workshop apart.
"And this is why we're superior to your kind. Controlling one's core is child's play for a scaling. You monk-"
"And yet you still lost lizard!" Ark barked, shutting the empress up. "Never forget, you lost and humanity won."
"And then humanity betrayed you." Irelix whispered in Ark's ear. "You sacrificed everything, endured so much hardship, and in the end… all your ideals never came to pass. And here you are, a slave once again. Don't you want something more?"
"Shut up." Ark said, clenching his teeth, focusing his anger on the task at hand as he felt a heavy burden descend in his chest. With Irelix's help, his core was settling down, compressing the wild energy into a compact and dense sphere.
Ark could see it in his mind's eye.
His core.
But not the red colored ball he was expecting. Instead what Ark saw was a violent core of colorless energy that burned brightly. The sphere, reminiscent of something Jasper once described as a star, IF that star was white and covered in spots of red energy.
Shit.
This was bad. Real bad. Categorically, mana cores were ranked via colors.
Red at its lowest. Followed by orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, then silver and gold. With mana circuits being ranked in a similar manner. But Ark's core was colorless, save for the spots of red.
"What the hell did you do to me?!" Ark demanded. "What's wrong with my core?!"
"Wrong? Nothing is wrong with it." Irelix replied.
"Then explain why my core is colorless? And this powerful?! How the hell am I supposed to conceal myself if I'm radiating mana?!"
"Just use your suppression techniques."
"How? I don't even know what I'm even looking at!" Ark replied. A human core was supposed to be smooth, an orb that regulated mana in the machine that was the person's mana circuits. However this… this was violitale, untamed, jagged with flaring spots of mana.
"With me of course." Irelix said, the dragon manifesting in her human form in front of Ark, her translucent body radiating energy. She reached down, placing a black talon underneath Ark's chin.
"You knew this would happen." Ark scowled.
"Of course." Irelix said before laughing with a hand over her mouth. "You misunderstand something here my dear SAVIOR of humanity."
The dragon gazed down with golden slanted pupils and a wide predatory smile that bore her fangs.
"You aren't human."
Ark grit his teeth, his eyes narrowing as he balled his fists.
"As loath as I am to admit it, you've ascended to the status of a superior species…" Irelix paused. "Even if you're just a halfling."
"Are you saying I'm a dragon now?" Ark asked, glaring up at the woman. "That I'm one of you?"
"Ha! The way you said that almost hurt my feelings monkey. Heavens no." Irelix replied before her demeanor shifted, her expression one of disgust."You're a disgusting halfling. Imitating the grace of a pure blood."
Irelix caressed Ark's cheek, his skin recoiling at the touch of scales rubbing against him as she tapped his heart with a talon.
"But not to worry darling. We WILL correct this."
"What are you playing at?" Ark snarled, sensing that the lizard had ulterior motives.
"Your ascension of course." Irelix said. "Dominance, wealth, power. All these things can be within your grasp…"
Irelix leaned down, her face pouting.
"But that's not what you want is it darling?" Irelix cooed. "You want revenge, you dream of it. But more than that, what you-"
"Get to the point. What do you want?" Ark asked, furrowing his brow.
"My, you're so callous with your words." Irelix said, feigning injury. "It hurts you know?"
Suddenly Ark's body pulsed, his heart thumping as his core abruptly churned, causing Ark to spit blood.
"It really. Really hurts." Irelix said, gazing down at the squirming child before her with indifferent inhuman eyes.
"You-!" Ark cursed, staring at the cause of his pain.
"Without me compressing your cores, you'll explode. So if yo-"
"Fine."
Irelix blinked.
"What?"
"Explode me." Ark spat, spitting blood in the face of the dragon that flew through her spectral body. "For the longest time my goal was your death. So if I go to the grave knowing I'm taking you with me, that's fine. After all, what I really want I can't have right? Ha."
Ark chuckled before the two enemies began staring at each other. Neither making a sound.
Irelix scowled, eyeing the soul that spoke with no hesitation. Looking at Ark, she could see his hatred, his anger manifesting in his core and wafting off his body like embers despite the hyper focused expression on his face.
"Tsk. You're no fun." Irelix said, flicking her wrist with the burden upon Ark's core immediately lessening. His energy swirling inside and compressing with no input from him.
Shit.
"Judging from your expression you understand what I'm capable of." Irelix said with a smug face.
"Tell me how to control this." Ark demanded. By his estimate, he had about twenty or so minutes before the smith forged a new collar.
"Of course. IF you say please." Irelix said, booping Ark on the nose.
Ark's eye involuntarily twitched.
"I'm kidding." Irelix replied. "You really have to work on your staring problem."
Irelix waved her hand, manifesting a spectral golden throne that she promptly sat in.
"A dragon's core isn't too dissimilar to a monkey's. However, I assume you're aware of a core's connection to your body's magic circuits."
"I am. It's the pathways through your body in which mana flows from the core." Ark replied, eyeing his blood on the ground. "Warriors use them to strengthen our bodies while mages use them to cast magic."
"Ah, so the monkey possess a brain." Irelix said to herself. "But that's only scratching the surface. Magic circuits regulate mana based on negative and positive settings, but they can also empower it, store it, and act as secondary cores."
Ark narrowed his eyes, remembering bits of what Irelix was saying from a lecture that Jasper once gave when he asked the mage to teach him magic.
That had been a lifetime ago, with Ark's memory not being perfect.
"Ok… I know this."
"Yes. But what you don't know is that a dragon's core is wrapped in a magic circuit then layered with another core." Irelix said, an image of a translucent sphere appearing in her hands then breaking apart into twin ovals, creating an infinity sign.
Ark's eyes widened. Dual cores?!
"They're almost indistinguishable as they mirror and overlap one another. Instead of one core splitting the processes of balancing negative and positive energy, two cores work in tandem. It's why we're so powerful." Irelix explained. "Two cores with a magic circuit in-between that streamlines the flow of negative and positive mana, empowering the energy within. So in order to surpress-"
Immediately Ark's body stopped emitting energy.
"Huh." Irelix blinked, staring at Ark as she crossed her legs.
"That's it?" Ark said toward the Dragon Empress, the halfling below her already demonstrating mastery of his dual cores.
Irelix opened her mouth but nothing came out, the dragon at a loss for words as the soul before her took control of both cores and suppressed the violent energy swirling within.
"There might be hope for you yet monkey." Irelix said as she disappeared and the door to the holding cell opened, flooding the space with light that made Ark blink.
"Oh fuck!" Ninety-Nine hollered, eyes wide at the mess that was the holding cell. "GET THE APOTHECARY!"