"Stop! Have mercy!" Qisal was so scared seeing Lith's fangs closing in to his exposed jugular that he forgot about the rivers of blood that were spurting out of his amputated limbs, painting the floor red.
"Enough. This has never been a fight to the death." Leegaain followed Salaark's lead and stood up as well, but instead of just cursing the defeated Wyvern he sent a wave of mana that reattached Qisal's wings and mended his wounds.
It also Warped Lith in front of the two Guardians.
"You proved your point already. Any more would just be wanton violence." He said.
"What point?" Lith snarled as his body rapidly shrunk and the feathers on his wings disappeared. Once again, the moment his auxiliary cores relaxed back into vortexes, all the extra mass was lost.
"That Qisal is a rude asshole." Leegaain said as all the Dragons and Phoenixes in the arena stood up, giving their brother a standing ovation with the worst possible timing.
To the rest of the Council, their reaction appeared as not only a response to Lith's victory, but also to Leegaain's words. In their mind, the Father of all Dragons had just stated that Wyverns were sc.u.m and the members of his extended family had unanimously approved.
"I couldn't agree more." Salaark clapped her hands as well, adding napalm to the fire already burning on the wounds of the Wyvern bloodline.
Xedros stared at her in hatred, but he wisely swallowed his anger along with his wounded pride.
'We'll see if you will still be this arrogant once I become a true Dragon.' He thought. 'Thrud was right and I was wrong. I only have to care about myself. The Council is nothing but a tyrant and its rules are only meant to keep our heads down, not to help its members.'
"Let's go, Sedra. We're done here." Xedros said to Faluel's son that was now his apprentice.
"But master, I have yet to even greet my mother." After spending a long time in the real world, the young Hydra deeply regretted his past behavior and wished to reconcile with Faluel.
Xedros gave him plenty of knowledge and power, but no warmth nor affection. The idea of spending one hundred years doing nothing but working for such an ungrateful, uncaring person made even getting Awakened look like a bad deal.
"Then go. We have much to do and little time to do it." Xedros's generosity surprised Sedra, but looking the gift horse in the mouth might make the Wyvern change his mind so after giving him a deep bow, Sedra ran to Faluel.
"Mom!" He said while hugging her with the same relief he felt after a nightmare back when he was still a young hatchling.
"My baby!" Faluel ignored the scene happening between Lith and the Guardians, focusing solely on her son. Lifestream revealed that Sedra had suffered no harm, wore no slave item nor spell, and that he was already developing his fourth head.
"Is Xedros treating you right? For someone who got stuck for years at two heads, you seem to be developing a bit too fast." She said.
"Sadly, yes." Sedra sighed. "I know the book that aunt Scar gave me like the back of my hand and I use the Council rules to fend off his most unreasonable requests, but he never did or asked something that would allow me to break free from my apprenticeship."
"You idiot! I always told you that power comes at a price. Who on Mogar would be so stupid as to give it away for free?" Faluel said.
"You are right. I've been a moron for years, always taking your teachings from granted and demanding instead of earning my share of knowledge." Sedra stared at the ground with shame before finding the strength to look her in the eyes.
"Gods, Mom, you look even more beautiful than the last time we met. What's your secret? Are you close to the white core or what?"
"Flattery will not get you anywhere, young man." She chuckled. "I just wore a bit of make-up and combed my hair for the occasion. Speaking of flattery, can you believe that his father tried to set us up for the future?" Faluel pointed at Lith.
Sedra needed to bite his tongue to not ruin their reunion with a streak of swear words, finding the piece of news more annoying than funny.
'Laugh all you want.' Xedros thought while following their conversation from a distance. 'This is the last time you see your son, Faluel, and the more happiness I allow him to bring you, the greater will be your pain.'
Meanwhile, Lith talked with Leegaain and Salaark, yet none of his requests for all the gifts they didn't give him over the years got fulfilled. Leegaain just warned him about the dangers of power without control while Salaark renewed her offer to visit the Desert.
A few days after the Council Meeting.
No matter how much Lith tried, as soon as he stopped spellcasting with his body and circulating fusion magic, his vortexes would revert from spheres into their original state. The silver lining was that he made progress anyway.
Now the vortexes would retain a spherical shape for a while and reverted slowly instead of instantly. On top of that, he was now able to circulate four elements at the same time with fusion magic and was getting close to five.
'Once I get to six elements, I must ask if Spirit Fusion is a thing. I've tried multiple times to infuse my body with Spirit Magic, but to no avail. Maybe once I can create a flow with all elements and mix them with my life force, things will be different.' He thought.
'Right. A new discipline is exactly what we need right now.' Solus's voice oozed sarcasm as she followed his movements with her energy body and circulated her own energy.
She hoped that such practice would help her to get her human body back faster.
'Spirit Magic, Domination, Forgemastering, the violet core, we already have so much on our plate that we barely have the time to breathe. Either you disown your family or you break up with Kamila.
'Otherwise even if it really exists, you'd never have the time to practice Spirit Fusion.' She said.
'I hate it when you're always right.' Lith sighed.
With his nineteenth birthday incoming and after he had shared with his family Salaark's words about his future offspring, everyone had decided to help him pick the right betrothal gift for his third adversary with Kamila.
The fact that he never intended to give her one in the first place had turned out to be an irrelevant detail to them. They bugged him so much that Lith now trained in the tower to not be bothered about the preparations of his own wedding.
'Speaking of Domination, Friya went on cloud nine when Faluel let her join our lessons.' Lith said.
'You bet. Now she doesn't feel like the weakest of the group anymore. It adds a lot of skills to her toolbox even in the case Dimensional Magic gets sealed, also-'
'Hold that thought.' Lith said as his army amulet pulled at his conscience.
