Realm of Power

"Bleh!" Dakka wakes up with a cold sweat.

Other than the fact that he's alive and breathing, the first thing Dakka senses is the strange feeling in the air.

It's like… every ounce of his body is a million times more alive than it was before. His veins are flowing with pure heat, and his muscles are bursting with unbounded power. Even as he breathes, he can feel pure mana flowing in and out of his lungs.

The mana here is so pure and dense that merely the act of breathing feels like a drug to Dakka. He could literally lie here and get drunk.

When he opens his eyes, what greets his sight is, undoubtedly, the most gorgeous site he's ever seen.

Sprawled directly above him is the clearest view of a galaxy he's ever seen.

The giant cosmic structure is resting flat in the sky, and it's long arms are covering halfway over the horizon.

Just the view of the galaxy is so mesmerizing – It's so… colorful, and it's so perfectly shaped.

What's more, dotting the sky are countless planets and moons – all glittering different colors like fine jewels. All of them have distinct, glassy looks to them.

All of the planets and moons are hovering so close to each other that many of them loom large in the sky – all larger than the largest moon.

Dakka's always had a fine appreciation for art, and for the first time in his life, he's convinced of one thing.

'There's no artist in existence who could paint this. Even if they tried, I'd burn their painting. Nothing they could paint would do this sky justice.'

Feeling utterly relaxed, Dakka chooses to transform back into his dragon form. He doesn't know why, but being in the Soul Realm of his race's Goddess, he feels that it's only appropriate.

So, now in his true from, Dakka curls his long tail around himself, rests his neck on his arms, and pivots his eyes at the sky.

For several minutes, Dakka just lay there, drinking in the sight of the glorious night sky.

---------------------

As Dakka lay there, he notices that the moon is spinning quite a bit faster than it was before. It only takes about 20 minutes for the galaxy in the sky to crawl across the sky and disappear over the mountains.

Everything seems perfectly normal until…

"WHAT!" Dakka roars in surprise.

He leaps to his feet and looks over the other horizon, and slowly creeping higher into the sky.

There, on the other side, opposite where the galaxy is disappearing, appears to be a huge sheet of ice – glowing and white.

Dakka at first thought it was just another planet, but then he notices that one of the ambient galaxies is hovering just between the edge of the flat "ice", and the rest of space.

It's a little confusing to look at, but this would suggest that the sheet of ice is… larger than the galaxies above it?

Plus, dragon vision (especially an Elder dragon's) is so sharp that they can see the curvature of a planet when they look at the horizon. However, when he looks at the growing wall of ice, the thing appears to be completely flat - no curve.

This would suggest to Dakka that this growing white wall isn't a planet of some sort, but a huge plane.

It's so strange, but the endless white glow seems to stretch forever into space – only averaging out to a distinct line on the horizon.

Dakka is about to get up and try to reach that white sheet, but then he remembers, 'Ah. There's a galaxy between myself and the white wall. That means that it's impossibly far away from me.'

Good luck reaching that far away…

'Well, I'll just ask Grandfather about it when I find him again – rather, when he finds me.'

---------------------

Sometime during Dakka's reverie, he briefly sees Tali's Elemental Spirit rise up from the ground some distance away and shoot into the sky. He can't quite hear what she's saying, but his excellent eyesight catches her bright smile.

Looking up, Dakka notices several other Elemental spirits appearing from their respective planets and coming to greet their new neighbor.

'Well, it looks like Madame Sinria has nothing to worry about,' Dakka mumbles. 'Anyway, I'm going back to stargazing.'

---------------------

Dakka probably would've lain there forever, if Fheldin hadn't flown over the horizon and landed next to him.

"Grandfather," Dakka mumbles sleepily when he sees Fheldin's humanoid form, "why're you still in your little body? Turn into a dragon already. Can't you feel your blood urging you to do it?"

"Not now," Fheldin growls. "And get UP! This is no place to sleep! The Goddess is watching us right now!"

Dakka's head shoots up in alarm, and his eyes start darting around the sky vigilantly. "Where?"

Fheldin crosses his arms and stares at his grandson. "Don't bother looking," he says, "Drakavar's Aura is the Universe's Aura. You can't detect it."

Under that logic, you can't detect an Aura if that Aura is everywhere – in the stones, air, and the cosmos above. Looking for Drakavar's body is like looking for a drop of water in the ocean.

"Anyway," Fheldin says as he beckons his grandson, "It's time to get this Ritual out of the way. It's not good to overstay your welcome here – especially when you're not one of her Halnith-Kae."

Dakka rapidly shifts into his humanoid body, and he walks beside his grandfather. "What is a 'Halnith-Kae', anyway?"

"It means 'blood-chosen dragon'." Fheldin explains. "Someone is 'Halnith-Kae' if they have a drop of her black blood in her body. It's a blessing from the Goddess."

Fheldin then looks down and closes his eyes for a moment.

"Grandfather-"

"Shush!" Fheldin interrupts him. "The Goddess is speaking."

It seems that only Fheldin can hear her voice this time. Maybe it's because he's one of these 'blood-chosen'.

"All right," Fheldin says. "The Goddess gave me permission to tell you a little about this Realm."

"Why?" Dakka was under the impression that the Goddess wouldn't want outsiders to know.

"Eh," Fheldin shrugs. "She says that she wants our fight to be fair. If you don't know how to use this Realm, then you'll die instantly."

"…Fair enough," Dakka concedes. "So, what do I need to know?"

---------------------

And so, Fheldin gets to explaining.

"First off, take everything you know about physics and forget about it." Fheldin points up to the sky. "If gravity were working normally, all of those planets would've crashed into each other by now."

Indeed, many of the planets are hovering so close together that they're practically touching. In fact, they're not even orbiting each other; they're just floating in place.

Fheldin then points up at the galaxy in the sky. "Also, forget what you know about matter having a speed limit. There's no such thing as the speed of light here."

(Or rather, there's no speed of light on the macroscale. The photons exchanged between particles to keep atoms together wouldn't function without a speed of light, so those have been left alone.)

However, Drakavar was so tired of her sky taking so long to update every time she moves something. If she moves a galaxy, she wants to be able to see it immediately.

Otherwise, she'd have to wait hundreds of billions of years just for her sky to look any different, due to celestial objects being millions or billions of light-years away from each other.

Hence, light here travels instantly. With the speed limits taken off, things can hurl through space at unbelievable speeds.

(Normally, the closer you are to the speed of light, the more energy it takes to accelerate. This difficulty in accelerating gets exponentially more insane the closer you get to the speed limit, until you finally have to be travelling with infinite energy propelling you when you reach the speed of light.)

(Hence, with nothing to slow down your speed, powerful dragons, like Fheldin and Dakka, actually accelerate much, much quicker and with less effort while in this Realm.)

"Third," Fheldin says while holding up 3 fingers, "Don't worry about smashing anything up. Whatever you rip apart will stitch itself back together again in a matter of seconds."

To demonstrate, Fheldin flicks his tail, and the mountain range in the distance is completely crushed flat.

Seconds later, the fallen debris floats back in place, and within moments, the mountain is back to being how it was.

"Drakavar, you see," Fheldin explains with a wry smile, "hates the feeling of having to withhold her power in her day to day life."

Naturally, if everything in this realm didn't have this indestructible property, then nothing would remain here but crushed up dust and a sky full of white fire.

"Another thing," Fheldin warns. He points up to the distant "ice sheet" taking up half the sky. "That's Drakavar's personal territory. Anyone who sets foot there will instantly be destroyed. Don't even try going near it."

"About that!" Dakka asks, "what IS that sheet of ice? I see galaxies hovering over it, so how big is it?"

"That's the mana crystal holding the Goddess's mana pool," Fheldin says with a wry smile. "I don't think anyone knows how big it is."

"…" ~ Dakka.

"What?" Fheldin shrugs. "She's an Elder God. What did you expect?"

"…Let's just get this duel over with," Dakka sighs.

"Not so fast!" Fheldin smiles.

"What?"

"You've noticed how strong we are right now, right?" Fheldin. "You FEEL it in your blood, don't you?"

To this, Dakka closes his eyes and smiles wistfully. "Yes. It feels amazing."

"Well," Fheldin explains, "this place is called 'the Realm of Power" for a reason. Here, our power is matched to the Elementals of equivalent size…"

"You mean…?" Dakka remembers that Madame Sinria only had 4 horns, despite being the spirit of a freaking star. Little Tali had 3 horns.

"That's right," Fheldin smiles smugly. "That other Realm is the Realm of Drakawyn, so the Elementals are much stronger there…"

"…Here," the older dragon gestures wide to the open skies and sprawling cosmos, "… here, is the realm of us, dragons – blood of Drakavar. Here, a mere 5-horned dragon has galaxies moving at his fingertips, and a 6-horned dragon like you can move the cosmos."

To demonstrate, Fheldin flicks his tail again, and the galaxy Dakka was marveling at earlier is scattered like dust in the wind.

This time, Dakka can't hold his composure.

"Grandfather… That wasn't you, right?" Dakka had never heard of any god able to output power on such a massive scale. From what he's heard from Frey, not even the Death King can do close to this much. At most, the god-king can destroy a few star clusters.

"Don't mind it," Fheldin waves his praise away. "We're only this powerful because we're in our Goddess's Soul Realm. Don't let it get to your head."

"Anyway…," Fheldin's voice trails off. "It's time to fight. I believe we're starting to overstay our welcome."

What Fheldin doesn't say aloud is that he can sense Drakavar growing impatient. She's always had a short temper, and no doubt, she wants to see her little toys fight it out.

Fheldin would've liked to chat with his grandson some more, but he doesn't dare keep the goddess waiting.

"Fly to that mountain over there," Fheldin commands while pointing off in the distance. "Once you're in place, we'll start.