Chapter 4131: Old yet New (Part 2)
Chapter 4131: Old yet New (Part 2)
"Babies can do that to you." Baba Yaga sighed. "At least it means that Lith and Solus are both in good health and that this is not as urgent as I feared."
"It actually is." Elina said. "Don’t worry, you won’t have to wait long. I have my methods."
She walked to the kitchen and turned on the stove, preparing a fresh pot of tea, coffee, and hot chocolate.
"Do you want to join us for breakfast?"
"I don’t want to intrude." Acala cleared his throat in embarrassment. "I’m-"
"Yes, please!" Dawn cut him short. "I’ll take one serving of everything and so will he."
"Of course." Elina chuckled as she prepared pancakes and cooked a fresh batch of biscuits. "And what he won’t eat, you will."
"Nailed it in one." Dawn sniffed at the oven like a hunting dog, right beside the hunting dog.
Lucky, the Ernas family pet, moved his big, round eyes from the bacon sizzling in the pan to Elina, hoping for an early snack.
"You really remind me of Solus." Elina said. "Do you also like eating?"
"Very." Dawn nodded. "It’s a new thing for me. I’ve got my own body only for a short while."
"Sounds like Solus." Elina smiled, glossing over the part about the excuse getting old.
As the sweet scent of chocolate, pancakes, and cookies wafted through the air, many stomachs grumbled in hunger.
"Cookies!" Solus reached full awareness the moment her nose recognized the familiar smell.
"Syrup!" Kamila said, her body ready to face the challenge. "Bacon! Ice cream!"
"You can eat anything you want in any combination you prefer as long as you don’t do it in front of me." Lith felt his stomach churning.
"Spoilsport." Kamila used Spirit Magic to lift herself and bolted out of the door almost too fast for Lith to follow.
"I’m not going to miss this." He grunted.
"I heard that!" She yelled from a distance, her mouth already full and her voice muffled.
"I’m not going to miss the super hearing either." Lith snorted.
"I heard that too!" Kamila grunted. "Gods, Lith can be so insensitive at times."
"Word, sister." Solus munched angrily.
"Solus, Kami, please say hello to our guests." Elina said, clearing her throat.
Only then did the two women stop eating like famished trolls and recognize the presence of unfamiliar faces sitting at their table.
"Malyshka!" Solus tried to say, but what came out of her mouth was mostly biscuit crumbs. "How long have you been sitting there?"
"Long enough." The Mother frowned at Solus’ eating habits. "Where’s Ripha? Isn’t she going to join us?"
"I’m right here." Menadion arrived a few steps ahead of Lith. "I need privacy to get dressed and take on a human appearance, and Lith was so kind to wait for me."
"I’m so sorry!" Kamila and Solus stopped eating in embarrassment.
"Food!" Lilia and Leran arrived first, but Fenrir was hot on their literal tail.
"I get it. You are hungry. Stop howling!" Selia said.
Solkar couldn’t escape from his crib, but he knew how to be heard.
After an awkward, long breakfast, Lith and the others moved inside the tower and shared the events of the day before with the white cores and Dawn.
"I’m sorry, I’ve never seen anything like that in any of my travels." The Horseman said. "Dusk and Night never encountered it either. We’ve always shared information about the mage towers we encountered."
"You’ve fought against mage towers?" Solus’ eyes widened in amazement.
"Of course." Dawn nodded. "They are rare, but when you live as long as I did, you’re bound to stumble into a few of them while searching for rare ingredients or magical resources.
"We Horsemen keep a meticulous record of mage towers because, aside from white cores, they are the only thing that can defeat us.
"We couldn’t afford to underestimate a mage possessing a tower since Mom didn’t allow us to take our steeds without a valid reason."
"Gods, I’m over a millennium old, and you manage to make me feel like a naive young girl." Silverwing said. "I’ve only seen two mage towers my whole life. Ripha’s and Yaga’s. No offense, but Horsemen’s steeds do not count."
"None taken." Dawn snarled.
"I’ve never met this thing either, but I might have heard about it." Baba Yaga watched the recording of the fight against the cursed tower in puzzlement. "You see this?"
She pointed at a gravity array.
"That’s Feikar’s Reality Break. It’s a magical formation less than a hundred years old. In theory, it means that this mage tower has been crafted with modern magic."
"Why do you say, in theory?" Lith asked.
"Because this travelling method..." She moved forward to the Black Throne’s escape. "It’s much older. It’s inefficient and outdated, to be precise. Back when I was building Bloodhaven, I researched all known mage towers to make the best one I could."
Baba Yaga looked at Ripha with envy.
"This method was described in a few books, but they were older than me and explained the history of tower crafting. Using world energy for propulsion requires wasting an entire floor.
"Even back when I built the first version of Bloodhaven, giving your tower a travelling form or dimensional magic was a much better and more versatile choice."
"This doesn’t make sense." Solus replied. "How can a modern enchantment and an outdated tower coexist? I thought only you and Grandma could use Creation Magic, and if the master of this tower knows it as well, why not change that floor?"
"If that tower is what I think it is, it can’t." Baba Yaga replied. "I believe that the Royals are right and the thing you faced in Nestrar is the Black Throne."
"What’s that?" Silverwing asked.
"It’s a name that circulates in the cursed objects community every now and then." Dawn replied. "Sometimes it’s referred to as the oldest living legacy on Mogar, if not even the very first.
"What it does and what its purpose is, however, changes with the person telling the story. It’s all hearsay. The ’I know a guy whose cousin says that his friend witnessed the Black Throne in action’ kind of rumor."
"So, the Baba Yaga equivalent of cursed objects?" Ripha furrowed her brows. "Sounds like bogus. Very ancient cursed objects die because they become so obsolete that even a common artifact can destroy them.
"The only exceptions are lost cities, and only because of their size and the weird powers that allow them to increase their strength indefinitely as long as they meet certain conditions. Something as old as the Black Throne should be as dangerous as a scrap heap by now."
"What Ripha says is correct, but Dawn isn’t wrong either." Baba Yaga’s words made her audience frown. "I read about the Black Throne in Leegaain’s library, back when I was one of his priestesses.
"I had already started researching a method to craft my mage tower, so I consulted every piece of information he had on the subject to learn from the mistakes of my predecessors and draw inspiration.
"The Black Throne was mentioned multiple times in many old legends. So old that they predate the Guardians, if not even Tezka. According to most versions of the story, the Black Throne is the first mage tower of Mogar."