After seeing the look on Syldir's face when she turned to look at the rest of us, I could tell that The Mouth was likely in danger.
There were a few things that I'd considered as potential outcomes, but putting it up against everything I'd learned about dragons so far caused most of my theories to crumble before they could fully form.
However, as I looked more intently around the cluttered room, I could sense something that I don't think I would have been able to notice at anything less than the fifth stage.
Mom, Ysevel, Kalia. Do you feel that? I asked them, cautiously moving over to a large chair that The Mouth likely used to sit in. It was more of a throne than anything else, with large pieces of dark cloth strewn across and over it. Mom took a step closer alongside Ysevel and Bernar, as the three of us looked over it carefully.
Syldir must have grown a bit curious herself, because within a few moments of our doing so, her face showed up right next to Bernar's, causing him to flinch at how close she now was.
Like a hardly noticeable gust of wind, I felt a tinge of mana, though it was so quick that I nearly mistook it for a breeze. The feeling of it reminded me of a hot breath on a cold window, slowly fading away back into nothingness.
"Shit," I realized, suddenly recognizing the type of mana I'd just felt. "It's Tyrant mana," I hissed, prompting Syldir to push us all aside for a moment, her eyes flaring with mana as she cut off a small piece of the cloth with a single flick of her finger.
I could feel the particles in the air surrounding the cloth in her hand almost tearing the space immediately surrounding them. It was like she was peeling back a realm that could neither be seen nor felt, vaguely reminding me of using Wraith mana.
The others and I could only look on in pure befuddlement as the air around the throne distorted and rippled far worse than when I had noticed it. The mana shifted once more and began to condense into a thin tendril, tracing a smoky black line away from it and out the door. "That slimy, son of a wyrm," Syldir grinned maliciously.
"What is that?" Bernar asked as he sidestepped away from it, watching it creep across the floor and out the door. "A message of sorts, that's for sure. I'd only ever heard about this technique, but to see it for myself…" she trailed off, watching it just as carefully as the rest of us.
"We'd better follow it. I don't know where it will lead, but I also can't sense where it ends, either. Be on your guard," she said, giving us a stern nod before storming out of the room with her spell still pouring mana into the tendril.
However, even after everything I'd ever seen accomplished with mana, this was something entirely beyond my understanding. How are you doing that? I asked her bluntly, getting a curious smile in response.
Meridian mana has many facets and sub-traits that would take a dragon's lifetime to explain, though I'm sure Ryfon has already told you as much, she sent as we left the room together. Is there a simple explanation for what you can do with it, then? I asked with a mental chuckle, causing her to let out a small hmm before answering.
I feel the best way to explain it would be to think of it as a culmination of all the different traits and aspects of mana that an adept user can pick and choose certain skills to utilize. For example, she said, flicking a finger out and turning one of the walls into glass briefly, then turning it back before Jashad noticed, getting a snicker from Bernar.
I-I see, I said, my eyes widening in the sheer potential of possibilities. Most tend to prefer more common traits, since the others can take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to fully unravel their secrets. That's not to say that you won't find anyone with more unique mastery, she said with a wry smile, leading me to believe that she was one such dragon.
I could only nod my understanding, limited as it was.
As we left the palace and made our way down a number of side streets and through a market, we came to a dead end at the end of an alleyway, where the tendril seemingly stopped beyond a thick, brick wall of a building.
"Damn it," Mom hissed, staring up at the massive structure. "Want me to do the honors?" Bernar asked as he leaned over to me. "Not my call to make, as interesting as that would be," I shrugged.
"That won't be necessary," Jashad said, moving to the front of our group and moving to the wall. "It's been a while, but it should be here somewhere," he said, tracing his hands along the stones and causing small specks of sand and dust to fall. "What should be here?" Ysevel asked, prompting Jashad to sigh.
"This entire kingdom was built on the bones of another, much like how Coltend Castle was once an elven citadel," he said, still scouring the wall for any signs of what he was looking for.
How the hell does he know about that? Did The Mouth tell him about the Great Partition? I wondered. It seems that's the most likely answer, but I wonder how much he really knows about it, Ysevel sent with a curious look aimed at him.
"Let me take a look," Derion said, tracing the tendril on the ground with his eyes, then leading his gaze to the wall. He stared at it for a few seconds, then looked back down to the trail, and back up at the wall again, as if comparing the distances between them.
"Hmm. What about this one?" he asked, reaching for a stone that was nearly a full arm's length overhead, pushing a stone that, upon closer inspection, seemed slightly out of place.
The entire wall began to rumble and kick up dust as it sank into the floor. Behind it was a long, dark hallway with a faint green glow at the far end we could see, and a stairway leading slightly downward. "By Yarathea, how did you see that before I did?" Jashad said with visible astonishment, prompting Syldir to raise an eyebrow at the mention of his goddess's name.
"Have you ever noticed that when people write on the wall, they usually do so at eye-level? I figured if someone like The Mouth had a throne that large, it would mean that his eye-level would be much higher up than ours," Derion shrugged as if that were common knowledge, but I dare say even Syldir was impressed by his deductions.
Seeing the look on her face, Mom gave a subtle, yet victorious humph as if to show pride in her teammate's abilities.
"I've never thought of it that way, but I'll be sure to keep that in mind from now on. Thank you for the lesson," Jashad said, offering Derion a nod, who only grunted and returned an even less noticeable nod. "After you, Sildyra," Jashad gestured forward with a slight bow.
She led us down a number of long corridors, each one seemingly tighter and more winding than the next. After making a few sharp turns, I noticed a symbol on the wall that vaguely reminded me of the ones I'd seen in the tunnels beneath Coltend. "This is it! I had a feeling it would lead us here," Jashad exclaimed with a whispered hiss.
"Do you know the way from here?" Syldir asked, getting a nod from him in return. "I do, though I will say we might have been lost without your help. I can take it from here if you think he might be able to sense your mana signature approaching," he said, getting a surprised look from her.
"How considerate. I'll take you up on that offer, then, since it would be wise of us not to alert anyone else who may be hiding down here," she said with a squint down the long hallway we began to walk along.