Dragon Unity, page 7
part #12 of Blood of the Ancients Series
That was what this was all about, after all.
Everybody needed to try to find a way to be more. Serena had to, as well.
She hurried out of the temple, and paused for a moment, feeling the energy all around her.
It hadn't changed that much, but she could tell that there was some part of the unity, some part of that pure essence, that still lingered. And the more she felt that the more certain Serena was that what she felt was important. Somehow.
She hurried forward, traveling into her land, and to another one of the temples. It was not one of the peripheral temples connected to the palace, but this was an ancient ruin she had visited a long time with her father. It was small, sections of the walls had crumbled, but an opening remained within it, reminding her of the temple's ruins where her mother had hidden.
As she did, she immediately began to pour the different types of essence into the stone the same way that she had at the edge of the Borderlands. She felt the change and realized that much like the last one, something more happened when she created the unity essence and pushed it. It was almost as if it locked the essence together and allowed her to create something different.
A pale white began to work its way up along the stone. Then a strange connection formed. When it did, Serena felt it differently than in the Borderlands. Maybe it was because the Borderlands were at the edge of her land and because she did not have the same natural connection as she did here. As she formed that connection, she began to feel that power bubbling outward and radiating through.
Then the temple seemed to tremble. It bubbled with the energy of unity.
But another connection formed.
Serena was aware of it because of her connection to the palace. This unity shifted, and some part of it seemed to link to the palace the way that it had not been before. It allowed the palace to focus on unity.
The unity was pushing outward, pulsating from this temple, spreading throughout the land faster and faster, changing the connection, changing the link to fire, and drawing it instead into unity. Serena could still feel the fire, but she wondered if others who were only connected to fire would be able to feel the same thing, or if what she had done would have severed some aspect of their connection, changing it so that they were no longer able to reach it.
Perhaps this was a mistake.
And until she knew, she was going to have to keep testing.
Chapter Eight
SERENA
Serena stood near the palace, embracing the pulsating unity from the temple she had changed along the border. There was enough power within that temple, drawing from the unity, but probably drawn from the nexus. Serena seemed to have some sense of direction from that power as it flowed outward and began to work toward the palace itself. Some parts of the palace were beginning to shift in a way that they had not been before.
When Rob had gone into the nexus and done whatever he'd done there, the palace had changed. And now she was able to reach it much better than she had before, but ever since that, she had not attempted to connect it or link it in any way to the unity, not how she was feeling now.
But now she was noticing that the power was beginning to slowly flow as if some aspect of that unity was flowing toward her and the palace. Serena wondered if the same thing needed to happen here or if it would be too dangerous for her to do so. She had seen the markings along the temple walls, but she didn't know if there would be something similar here. If there was, then she might need to do something to help draw upon that power, but she was also concerned that if she did, some aspect of it would change, and she would modify the palace in a way that she would not be able to reach for the power that she knew that was within it.
She headed inside. The manifestations of the soldiers stood motionless. She hurried up to the room where she kept her mother prisoner. She was curious as to her reaction.
When she opened the door, she found her mother pacing. Her mother was rarely agitated. But today, her hair, which was always tied in a pristine bun, was now loose and frazzled, and her eyes were wild, crackling with fire, but…
More importantly, she seemed to be holding onto the power within her, but not able to reach for anything more.
Her mother turned to her the moment she walked into the room. Serena had not come alone, having brought several of the manifested soldiers with her, knowing that it was dangerous for her to risk coming to her mother without having any sort of help. When her mother saw them, she snorted before continuing to pace once again.
"I suppose you know what you did?"
"I know what I did," Serena said.
Only…
Serena didn't really know what she had done. She could feel it even now, though. It was almost as if the palace itself was trying to speak to her, warning her about some part of it that had changed. Every passing moment it continued to add more and more change, to the point where Serena felt some parts of the palace pulsating with unity, and no longer pulsating with the same presence of fire as it once had.
"You will change everything," her mother said, glancing over at her. "He will destroy everything that we have become."
"Or I will make everything better than what it had been before," Serena said.
Her mother snorted.
"You're so foolish. So arrogant. You think you know everything but know so little about this land and what came before you."
Serena paused, and she glanced over at the soldiers. With a flick of her head, they all departed, leaving her alone in the room with her mother. It was a gamble, but at the same time, it was probably the right kind of gamble, as Serena knew that her mother was not going to speak as openly with the others there. Not only that, but she also thought that she needed her mother to feel confident in a way that she only could when she thought she had the upper hand on Serena. With the soldiers present, she would not feel that way.
"If you knew so much about this land, then you would've understood what was here before. You do not."
"I understood the power that was here. I simply did not…"
She paused, and when she did, Serena watched her for a moment, trying to make sense of what her mother was thinking, but there was no obvious sense from her. Rather than trying to push through a dragon-mind connection, she simply waited, allowing her mother to try to share more. When she didn't, she looked around and started to pace with her mother.
"You understood the power that was here, but you didn't connect to it?" Serena asked. "Why?"
"I didn't know how," her mother finally said.
Serena smiled to herself. That had been what she had long suspected, though there was another aspect to it, and it was something Serena wasn't sure her mother wanted to hear. It might not be just that her mother hadn't known how to connect to it; it might've been that the palace had not permitted her mother to connect to its power.
There was some aspect of the palace having a measure of consciousness. However strange that seemed, it had been difficult for Serena to comprehend, and even more difficult for her to work with as she continued progressing from dragon soul to dragon blood. The palace itself had given her some of that power. But it also tried to take that power away when it felt threatened.
"Now that you know what it could be, how do you feel?"
Her mother paused and crossed her hands together, looking over at Serena. "If you think I'm going to give you some great respect or credit for what you've done, you are mistaken, Daughter. I think you're doing the wrong thing. You know what's coming."
"That's just the problem," Serena said. "We don't know what's coming. We know something is out there but don't know why it's coming for us."
Her mother snorted.
"You understand so little. There is power beyond anything that you can fathom. I have felt it. I have dreamt of it."
This was something that Serena had not yet heard, and the idea that her mother dreamt of power left her with a different series of questions than she had before. Maybe what she needed to do was to ask her mother about that.
Why did her mother betray them and join forces with the Eternal?
Perhaps power?
No. She would've stayed and worked with Rob if it was about power. It meant that it was about something else. She wasn't sure what that was, only that it suggested that her mother needed something more.
And if it wasn't about power, was it about fear?
"Are you so afraid of it?"
"If you understood what was coming, you'd be afraid, Daughter. I was only trying to do what I could to keep our land safe."
"What did they ask of you?"
"They didn't ask anything."
Serena had a hard time thinking that was the case, as she had very little experience with some of these other entities, but what her mother had implied suggested that they had demanded something of her. Though at this point, Serena wasn't sure what that was going to be. "What did they tell you?"
Her mother started to pace again, and for a moment, Serena didn't think that she was going to get any sort of answer from her mother. At this point, maybe it didn't matter. She could feel the palace starting to pulsate, changing, and she wondered if she had to head outside, to add her own connection to it, using the unity, or perhaps it wouldn't even matter. The longer she stayed here, the longer she could feel the palace reacting to whatever Serena had done before, and she could feel that power beginning to flow in a way Serena had never understood.
"All of this was once theirs," her mother finally said. "Is that what you want to hear? All of this was theirs, and they want it back."
That surprised Serena.
If the ancients had that kind of unity and had access to that kind of power, it suggested some reason caused them to change it and had taken them away from that power.
"What do you mean about it being theirs?"
"That is all I know. It was once theirs. They will retake it, especially when you prove how much power remains in this land. That is why you need to stop this."
Could that be what this was about? Power?
"I will not," Serena said.
With that, she strode out of her mother's room, sealed the room shut, and then left the palace. Once she was outside, she looked up along the walls of the palace, feeling it's slowly changing energy of it.
She used a series of different types of essences to press into the stone and began to feel the way it was pulsating in response to her essence, the way it was reacting in some manner as if it had always waited for unity. Even as it did, she could feel some part of it beginning to shift and change, though she wasn't sure if it was anything she was doing or if it was tied to the temple she had activated.
It didn't matter, Serena realized. When she formed the unity essence, and began to push that into the palace, she couldn't feel anything more than what she'd already done. There was the hint of energy and the hint of power, but nothing else that she was going to be able to do. The only thing she could detect was that some aspect of it had already begun to change. And nothing that she added would make a difference.
She had to wait to see what had happened.
She focused on what she could feel of Tessatha, and with a blast of the essence, she was carried up and free from her land, and over to the thorn land. When she reached it, and where she knew Tessatha to be, she hurried inside the small stone cottage that Tessatha had taken over, only to find that it was filled with the fragrance of flowers, the steaming smoke from a teakettle, and the fragrance of the flame in the back hearth. Tessatha was seated at the table, a book opened in front of her and a pen in hand. She looked up as Serena entered.
"I didn't expect to see you so soon," Tessatha said.
Serena smiled tightly. "I should've just called you," she said. "But I've been bothered by something. I don't know what to make of it, and I was hoping that maybe you could help me."
She filled in Tessatha with what she had done and what she had experienced, and as she spoke, Tessatha sat upright, and then closed her book, looking over at Serena with concern etched in her eyes. She said nothing for a long time, as if trying to decide what she was going to do, then finally she nodded slowly.
"I don't know that I have an answer to that, but we were studying something similar before. It was how we had begun to question if unity was necessary. We had speculated that there was a different kind of power that was out there. I can show you something, but I don't know if it's going to be much longer."
"What is it?" Serena asked.
Tessatha offered a hint of a smile.
"Let me just show you."
She got to her feet and followed Serena out of the cottage. Once outside, Tessatha used her essence and then blasted upward, until she was in the air, carried away from the thorn realm.
They didn't go very far. They were along the border of the Borderlands, near Rob's realm, and yet in a place, Serena had never visited before. The land below was barren and rocky, and though it should be connected to essence, and tied to the unity as everything else was, Serena did not have the distinct sense of that unity within it as she would've thought that she should. She came to land, following Tessatha as they did, until they stepped forward into a pile of rubble.
With a wave of her hand, Tessatha forced the rubble upward, and it began to stack. Serena noted a pattern here, and could feel an essence memory that had lingered, and realized that Tessatha was using that memory to create the stone stack. Or perhaps she wasn't even using essence memory. It was hard for Serena to know whether that was the case, or whether she was simply using what she remembered herself. Regardless of what it was, she helped her rebuild the structure until it was formed once again.
It was a small stone cottage that reminded Serena of the one in the thorn realm. Perhaps a bit larger than that one, but the structure was generally the same. She looked over to Tessatha, who was staring at it, her eyes distant, and almost as if she had lost some part of herself.
"What is it?" Serena asked.
"This was once one of our places," Tessatha said softly. "It was lost long ago. I've resisted coming back here, as there are too many memories here, and it's almost better if they remained buried, I suspect."
"Do you think Arowend would have needed to come back here?"
"Arowend came through here once," Tessatha said, looking over at her, before turning her attention back to the cottage. "I could feel his presence. I don't know what he intended to accomplish when he came through here, but I could feel what he did."
The Netheral, Tessatha didn't say. He had come through here, probably looking for some part of himself that he could reunite with others, and perhaps looking for memories that had been lost. All because he had been shattered and destroyed by the essence weapon. Ripped apart in a way that had left him changed and turned into something less than he had been before.
And now…
Now that he had returned, he had not returned. Tessatha had, though.
"There may be some memories that linger here," Tessatha said. "As I said, I haven't been back here, and I don't know if there is anything here that we might be able to find. I've avoided this."
"We don't have to do it, then," Serena said.
She took a deep breath, and when she did, she let it out slowly and then began to pour essence into the stone. She started with the bramble essence, and then shifted, adding one after another, before finally shifting all of them and beginning to blend them into something akin to the unity. When she did, the stone itself began to shift, bubbling with energy. Serena thought it might change the same way the temple changed, drawing upon the unity essence in that manner, but she didn't see anything quite like that. Instead, it was just as if the stone itself started to settle, blending together in a way that looked like it was meant to be.
"If what you're saying is true, then our research is tied to what has happened."
"How is that possible?"
Tessatha shook her head. "I don't know. You would think that some of the difficulties of the past would stay buried in the past, but unfortunately, it seems as if, too often, the past likes to come back to haunt us. At least, it seems that way to me. I'm tired of it haunting me," she said, glancing over to Serena for a moment, and offering a sad sort of smile. "But perhaps allowing me to learn what we had attempted to learn long ago is the benefit. At least, I hope we can find a benefit." She let out another heavy sigh and then turned her attention back to the stone. "Are you ready to go inside?"
Serena wasn't sure that they would find anything. If it had been buried under the rubble, what could they uncover here, anyway? Nothing other than memories that would haunt Tessatha and Arowend.
Serena began to wonder if there were essence memories here that they might be able to find. Even if they were difficult memories, there was the possibility that they would have left some aspect of them behind to make sense of the kind of power that Tessatha and Arowend had once pursued. And there was no doubt in Serena's mind that they had once pursued something, and that those powers were tied to what they were dealing with now. If she could find out what that was and make sense of it, then maybe they'd better understand what was happening and what the Eternal warned them about.
The inside of the cottage was small and cozy. There was a hint of essence inside, though she didn't pull on it, thinking that it was probably better if Tessatha were the one to do that, allowing her to try to reach for the different types of essence that had been here. When she didn't, Tessatha looked over to Serena.
"Everything is lost," she said softly. "I had thought… Well, I suppose it doesn't matter what I had thought."
"You thought something might have survived?"
"Items of power could have survived," she said carefully. "At least, that was the hope. But it seemed as if nothing had remained. Nothing I could use."
Serena wasn't sure if there was anything she could say to help her, so instead, she wandered around the inside of this space. She focused on essence and memories but did not find anything she could puzzle together. Partly because she didn't want to strip away anything that Tessatha might need, and also because there really wasn't much here.
