Chapter 1743 - Dragon Greed (Part 1)

After reading them, Lith discovered that all of Glemos' notes about him and Friya only drew comparisons respectively with Morok and Ekidna.

The late Tyrant had focused solely on what allowed the Tiamat's seventh eye to manifest and on how Friya's life force harmonized with the six elemental energies without becoming unstable.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Ekidna ignored those idle chatter about sharing secret abilities and hugged Morok with joy, burying his head in her bosom the moment her wounds healed.

With Glemos' death, the elemental sealing arrays were gone and Ekidna had used her silver wing to mend her broken spine.

"You really saved me and now I'm free! Which one of you knows how to stabilize a mana core?" She shifted her gaze from Faluel to Ajatar, feeling they were the most powerful in the room.

"Slow down, kid. I don't know what you are talking about." The Hydra looked at the Fomor with suspicion, noticing her resemblance with the reverted Balors she had seen from Lith's and Quylla's holograms.

"Didn't you call them to help me?" She pushed the much shorter Morok away to look him in the eyes.

'Oh, crap she completely misunderstood the situation. Brain, how do I get out of this situation?' He thought, his face still flushed in arousal.

The voice in his head replied with horny gibberish as Morok stared at her with a dumb look on his face.

"I never said that I would." The Tyrant said.

According to Master Ajatar, the best thing to do when a woman put him up against the wall was to tell the truth.

"They are our masters and have come to rescue us not you."

Ekidna took a few steps back as her joy was replaced by the frightened look of a cornered animal.

"Don't worry, kid. We won't hurt you unless you give us a good reason to. Now, I need an explanation." Ajatar projected a mind link that allowed the members of the group to share the events in the crystal mine.

"Those Harmonizers are amazing! In the wrong hands, they might do a lot of damage, but their ability to refine crystals and metals alone is worth the risk." Dragon greed shone in Faluel's eyes, making Ekidna's fear turn into terror.

"Agreed." Ajatar nodded, his eyes burning with desire as well. "We just have to keep this knowledge to ourselves. The Council did nothing to help us so they have no right to benefit from our hard work."

'What hard work?' The Fomor thought. 'It was Glemos who created them and my people who had to undergo his cruel experiments to perfect them. They call us monsters, but we feel pain and grief just like anyone else.'

"On top of that, if too many people know about the Harmonizers, we could easily have a second Glemos, if not more. What we have discovered must not get out of this room." The Drake's words sounded wise to the Awakened and like a convenient excuse to Ekidna.

"Did you collect a few samples?" Faluel asked, and when her apprentices nodded, she had them hand her the Harmonizers one at a time.

Glemos' double imprint technique allowed him to destroy the metal collars at any moment by activating the only spell in the artifact that carried his energy signature and to make the Harmonizers self-destruct in the event both imprints were removed.

Like most mages, the late Tyrant was an egotistical, paranoid creature scared of the thought that his research might be stolen and with no interest in sharing it with others.

Just as his dimensional ring had self-destructed upon Glemos' death so the now masterless Harmonizers went haywire the moment they were taken out of the dimensional space they had been stored in.

Faluel used the Forgemastering spell that she had created for the occasion, but Glemos had been a Forgemaster as well.

Her Stasis Field couldn't seep inside the multi-layered enchantments fast enough to stop them from collapsing all at once the moment that the lack of imprint triggered the self-destruction process.

"Shit! Ajatar, give me a hand with the next." The first Harmonizer crumbled from the inside, turning into a pile of cracked bits held together by the Hydra's spell.

The Drake had already used Invigoration, but it wasn't enough. He had to drink several tonics to recover the focus he needed to help her. Together they cast the stasis field respectively from the inside and the outside at the same time, yet the final result didn't change.

"Dammit! What if we bring the Harmonizers back to our lairs and establish a stasis array?" Ajatar asked.

"It would be pointless. The stasis would block the self-destructing spell along with or Forgemastering spells. My plan was to use the stasis to keep the Harmonizers from falling apart and then use my breathing technique to study them." Faluel replied.

"I see the problem now." The Drake nodded. "A stasis field would paralyze us as well."

While the two lesser Dragons debated how to treat the last two Harmonizers left, the rest of the group kept their weapons at hand without never averting their gaze from Ekidna.

To them, she was just Glemos' accomplice and they hadn't forgotten her contribution in their capture. The Fomor felt Mogar crumbling under her feet. She was now surrounded by enemies and her only hope to achieve a stable core had died with Glemos.

Silent tears streaked down her eyes as she realized that everything was lost.

"Don't worry. Master Ajatar is a great guy. I'm sure that he'll find a way to help you." Morok patted her arm. He was the only one to know her circumstances and tried to console her.

"Help me?" The physical contact snapped her out of it, turning her despair into blind fury. "I know Dragons, they are creatures of greed. Those two don't give a damn about me, they only care about the profits they can make."

"Well, yes but-"

"They didn't bother asking me one single question." Ekidna cut him short. "They don't care about my core, only about this thing around my neck. Even if they manage to recreate Harmonizers, they will either keep me a prisoner or kill me. They are even worse than Glemos!"

"Cut them some slack, okay? The only thing they know about you is that you helped my father with his plans. On top of that, monsters don't have a good reputation. They will keep you a prisoner only until they are sure that you're not a threat."

Hearing his beloved teacher being compared to his father made any trace of compassion disappear from Morok's voice.

"And how long would that be? Months? Years? Decades? All the while they study my abilities with some self-righteous justification. How are they different from Glemos, exactly?"

"Calm down, we can work on two subjects at the same time." Faluel said after losing the third Harmonizer and hearing the quarrel.

"That's the problem. You keep talking about me like I'm a thing whereas I'm a person!" Ekidna lashed out. "I endured Glemos' experiments in the hope to be free and because they would benefit my entire race.

"I won't stand being at your mercy just to survive. I'd rather die than spend my whole life as a slave.." Ekidna needed but a thought to release the Harmonizer on her neck.