her hand along the wall.
Mantic looked over his shoulder with warm gray eyes. “That is because it is. In fact this entire place is one piece of wood, and it’s alive.”
“This thing is a tree?” Keither said, incredulity etching his voice. He’d stopped.
Mantic looked appraisingly at him. “Not a tree but an organism, a plant. Yes, Elves can make plants grow as I’m sure you know. So, if you are aware of what you are doing you can make a plant grow however you want. We grow everything. That’s how we mine, how we get our food, clean our water…everything.”
Mantic walked on, stopping any questions. This was fine. Legon was sure that none of them would have a shortage of questions any time soon, but he didn’t think they would be able to comprehend much right now anyway.
The hall led out to a balcony. To their right was a vast room that would give most people vertigo, though it didn’t really seem like a room. The opening in the top of the dome was about two thirds the size of the floor below them. They could see a large area where people and, more important, dragons could maneuver. The room was circular with large alcoves around it, Legon guessed twelve in all judging by their size. The alcoves were lined up next to each other with only ten feet of wall separating one from another at the bottom and openings that arched to a point at the top, which was about fifty feet tall. Some had large cloth-looking doors that closed in the center, showing the Dragon’s crest on it. Some were open and Legon saw the blue dragon walking into one. The hangars, as Mantic called them, were large in and of themselves, but still not big enough to take up the whole dome.
“Are there other things like this here?” Legon asked.
“Yes. The dragon hangars are only in the center but there are apartments, dining areas, an infirmary, and even a swimming area in this complex,” Mantic answered.
“Swimming area?” Sasha asked, confused. Back home they had learned how to swim and Legon enjoyed swimming in the pond, but he had never heard of a swimming area. He too was confused.
“It’s easier to show you,” Mantic said with a smile.
There were halls that connected to the walkway and he saw them going deep into the dome. It was much larger than he had originally thought, and he was sure that it went deep into the ground as well. Mantic turned into an opening that led down a winding staircase that seemed to go on forever, with exits every fifteen feet to a new level.
When they got to the bottom they walked out onto the floor of the main room, but it wasn’t the bottom. The dome had to be over two hundred feet high and this room, while large, couldn’t have been more than eighty feet tall.
Legon looked up above the hangars to see large rectangular pieces of wood that stuck out from the wall. They were about half as wide as the hangar’s base and they were about twenty feet long.
“Mantic, what are those?” Legon said, pointing to the blocks.
Mantic smiled. “Those are the protective sheaths, if you will, for the defensive crystals this dome uses.”
“I don’t get it,” Sara said.
Mantic explained that magic could be stored in other objects like gemstones, which Arkin had already told them about. He then went on to say that during the War of Generations both the Elves and the Iumenta were engaged in a magical arms race. It was impractical to find gems big enough to store any significant amount of power, and they were finicky and hard to enchant.
During that time of the War, dragon domes were not in existence. The Elves grew hangers that were just curved buildings that the dragons stayed in. They grew fortresses out of trees and other plants, too. They could place spells on these structures, allowing the energy of the plant to power spells, and the domes today still used that principle. The structure was alive, and its energy went into everything.
However, these forts put the Iumenta at an extreme disadvantage; they could not make plants grow at will. Instead, they discovered crystalline technology, determining what made gems so good at holding magic and then finding a way to grow crystals with those specifications. From there, magic evolved rapidly and both sides began working on crystals, though even to this day, Mantic explained, Iumenta crystalline technology was far more advanced than Elven.
He went on to explain that there were crystals littering this dome that controlled everything from the dome’s growth to its lighting. They also powered spells that allowed the dome to see far away, sensing enemies and even weather patterns. More important, these crystals powered protective wards that were extremely powerful, so strong, in fact, that no Elven or Iumenta dragon dome had ever been defeated.
Legon felt his head buzzing with the information. Mantic looked sympathetically at them. “This is a lot to take in. It will take you years to learn all that this place holds and does. Don’t worry about it for now, just understand that it works.”
They nodded. He waved for them to follow. They walked next to hangars, most empty or closed with different crests on the door. As they approached, a woman walked out. Legon’s stomach gave a slight leap at the sight of her. She was an Elf, slender like all the other Elves, but her figure was incredible. He felt Keither’s brain function stop as well, and he understood why Sasha and Sara had reacted they way they did to Mantic.
She was wearing a pink dress that looked to be made of silk or some other rare and expensive cloth. It was like no other he’d seen. It was as if a piece of fabric was wrapped or inexplicably flowed around her body, simple and elegant. His eyes moved up her body. Her face was warm with thin red lips and a small nose. It was her eyes that seemed to make time stop, though. They were a deep blue green, rich with color and character, with metallic looking specks in the irises that reflected pink. They were amazing. What were they? Then it hit him as Mantic reached forward to introduce the woman.
“You’re a dragon!” Legon blurted without thinking.
It was the flecks of pink that gave it away. Arkin had told them that magic affected the look of one’s eyes once they were strong enough to ascend. The more flecks in the eyes, the more magic. He hadn’t understood what Arkin meant by “flecks” until now. She smiled widely, showing perfect white teeth.
“Guilty. My name is Iselin.” She gave a slight bow to them.
She turned to Arkin and her voice become playfully condescending.
“Babysitting didn’t wear you down too much did it? Do you need any more help?”
“Ha ha. I missed you too, Ise. Thank you for saving our collective behinds,” Arkin said.
“Anytime.”
“You were the dragon that saved us?” Keither said incredulously.
Legon and Keither felt the slight horror of knowing that their new true love had burned twenty people to a crisp not too long ago.
She laughed. “Why, do I look like a fire breathing beast to you?”
“Ah no, no…that’s not what I’m saying,” Keither stammered. “You’re very attractive. Not that I was looking…”
Sara spoke. “He’s fun to mess with.”
“I can see that,” Iselin said, smiling.
Keither chose silence. Legon thought that was a good idea. They stood quiet for a moment. He focused on Sasha’s mind. She was thinking. What was she going…?
“So Iselin, I’m sorry we’ve been rude. I’m Sasha. This is Sara, Keither, Arkin, who you seem to know, and my brother Legon.” As she finished she nudged him slightly forward. Reason and logic dictated that Sasha avoid doing anything embarrassing, something she usually succeeded at, except in one particular situation: Sasha’s favorite pastime was trying to set him up with people. To her credit she was good at it, but he needed to find a way out of this. too late.
“You are a very beautiful woman Iselin. Your husband is lucky,” Sasha said.
Iselin looked a little uncomfortable. “Oh, I’m single…”
Sasha didn’t really try and conceal her happiness at the news “Really? Well are you going to be the one that shows us around?”
“Ah, I don’t know. I can if you would like…”
It was clear Sasha had taken Iselin off guard, and Legon wasn’t sure that it was a good idea, considering she was in fact a fire-breathing monster, albeit a very attractive one.
“It’s just, well, you seem so nice, and you know Arkin, and Legon is new to this Elf thing so…” Sasha trailed off.
