Chapter 292: In The Mountain
[All units along the volcanic line, we are reforming one hundred kilometres from the border. When it is safe, make your way back toward the reformed line outside the burn zone. Units who are unable to retreat, sound off for attempted rescue.] The line General requested over the radio the next morning.
Karl looked over at Bob Mackenzie, who just shrugged.
"We're pretty much fine where we are, we're not going to be affected by the fires in here, the Dwarves planned for things like that. So, we might as well just wait it out, as we're already in front of the main lines." He suggested.
[Line Command, this is 95988, we are isolated in front of the lines, past the fire threat. We will shelter in place until the situation is resolved.] Karl informed them, right before Doug called in to inform them of the same thing.
If Command suspected that they were together, they didn't say anything, only confirming that they wanted the two teams to continue daily check-in protocol, so they could confirm that they were alive and well.
The other soldiers and Elites were quickly escaping from the area as the snow melted, and the forests began to burn under the hot ash, which seemed to be intensifying, instead of dissipating, as it should have after an eruption.
The Magma Dragon was still somewhere in the area and staking his claim on the region around the volcano, adapting it to more perfectly suit his personality and racial environment requirements.
He was a proud and ancient being, locked away for a millennium, and now that he was free, it was obvious to the two nature priests that the Dragon intended to make himself a new home right where he had been imprisoned.
"It would be nice if we could get communications from further away. Now that they're retreating, it's not going to be easy to even get the daily communications out to the lines. There is a channel for long distance, low-quality communications, but that won't let us hear any of the news from the other fronts, only get our signal through to the lines in Morse code." Bob explained.
The rest of the group gave him blank looks and he laughed.
"There is a translation on the radio, it's a series of long and short tones. It makes it easier to understand distant signals, and the Command Staff will have both an automatic decoder and an expert on hand to translate signals. It's only to be used for urgent messages, and you keep it brief.
Normally, what we would send would be something like our name and then all alive." He explained.
Not long after, the radio signals on the main channels started to get less frequent, as the teams that could be recovered were led to safety. The ash was clogging up the vehicles and making it hard to breathe, but a mage or cleric barrier made it relatively safe to keep moving, as long as you weren't too close to the volcano, where the Dragon's magic was already imbued into the ash, and causing it to burn through barriers.
Bob laughed as the radio finally had a moment of silence, with nobody attempting to transmit. "This might be the most relaxing mission I've been on in a while."
Tessa chuckled at the notion. "Only for the next few days. Things are going to get hectic again after the Frost Giants regroup and try to eliminate that Dragon from their border. They might even come back with the Frost Dragon."
Karl considered that for a moment. Their elements lined up, and the dragon had flown off into their territory, but that was no guarantee that they were on the same team. In fact, if they really had been trying to siphon power from the Dragons, they might have made a new enemy of the creature.
Karl took some time to work on rebuilding the energy focus in all the beast spaces, and noticed that Remi had made some interesting alterations to her swamp. There was a miniature swamp within the swamp, using sprigs of the various plants and small rocks, so she could slither through it like she was a giant snake, as tall as the trees.
It was cute, like a child's playhouse, and Remi looked happy with her construction, so Karl didn't mention anything about it as he continued to build the power in the spaces. It would still be quite some time before she was fully grown, but the other three were slowly moving up through Commander rank and didn't seem to be limited by anything yet.
It was simply a matter of time, lots of time, until they managed to advance again.
The large Frost Stone that Thor had obtained had been transferred to Remi's space, and was serving as the focal point behind a platform like the one that the Naga Bosses in the dungeon had been standing on.
Remi had the book that Ophelia had found opened on the platform, where she had built up a set of strange statues. They had been placed around the perimeter of the space, and she was currently working on some sort of skill, Karl assumed. She was intensely focused on something, and she was adjusting the position of the items on her platform, then focusing again, and making more adjustments.
Comparatively, Hawk was making small flying mice out of his fire, Thor was napping in his pond full of Holy Stones, and Rae was carefully rearranging the corpses strung up in her forest.
It took a while for Karl to understand what the little snake was up to, but Remi was trying to create a Totem. Each of the stacks of stuff was designed to represent something, and she had even made a bunch out of mud, then adorned them with shiny things to get them just right.
He couldn't tell what sort of effect she was going for, but it looked like the Frost Stone had been permanently changed by the magic of the Magma Dragon.
Even now that it had cooled her her swamp, the stone was still glowing red and not ice blue, though it was still giving off a strong sense of magic. Perhaps that was why Remi was having so much trouble trying to get her totem experiment to work, but as she was basing if off the ones that Ophelia made, there was a chance that she would need to make extensive modifications anyhow to make a Shaman type totem.
It didn't really matter if she was successful, though. Remi had found a learning project that was keeping her attention for more than five minutes, and that alone was impressive.
Even if most of it was just making statues of herself out of clay and then decorating them to see if they would become magical. It seemed a bit silly, but it was making her happy, and the fact that there were dozens of little Remi statues around the platform now was highly entertaining to the other beasts.
Among the humans, everyone had a hobby to pass the time as they waited. Karl had chosen to meditate to work on his strength, as had the three clerics, though they had taken a mid-afternoon break to play with the beasts before focusing again.
They were just beginning to relax for the evening, secure in the fact that they were underground with the entrance to their bunker buried under ash, when a roaring from above them caught everyone's attention.
It wasn't the deep roar of the Magma Dragon, it sounded smaller, but similar in tone.
Then there were more roars in the distance, and the sound of flapping wings.
Doug laughed as the dragon flew away. "I hope that's a territory fight about to break out. Because if that idiot of a Magma Dragon has attracted a mate already, it's going to take forever before it's safe to leave the mountain."
That was a thought that hadn't occurred to them before. The Magma Dragon was turning the area into a perfect nest for himself, but what if there was another single Magma Dragon in the area?
It seemed unlikely, as there were no other volcanic areas that Karl knew of, but anything could seem possible if you knew little enough about how the world worked. And he knew exactly zero about how Magma Dragon mating rituals worked.
Whatever happened, it was in the distance because they didn't hear anything else that night other than a few more messages from the lines, reporting that there were no Frost Giants approaching their new position today, and that the black cloud of ash was still blotting out the sky.
Once that changed, and the ash began to cool, they would head out to see what survived.