Chapter 1336: Home Beneath the Auroras

A/N: Surely you guys didn’t expect it to be a male god, did you?

****

Phei woke beneath an aurora, and for several quiet seconds he simply remained where he was, half buried beneath thick beast pelts while immense ribbons of violet, blue and pale emerald drifted across the opening above their home

—their light filtered through layers of ancient ice and turned the ceiling translucent, filling the cavern with slow-moving color that crawled over the walls, the smooth frozen floor and the enormous crystalline body resting farther away.

The Primordial Frozen Zone had spent almost an entire year attempting to murder Phei in increasingly inventive ways, yet somewhere during that year he had been forced to admit that the place possessed a beauty capable of stealing attention from even its cruelty.

Beyond the murderous blizzards, ancient glaciers and creatures that regarded anything warm enough to bleed as a possible meal, there were valleys where the ice had become so clear that strange blue radiance could be seen sleeping kilometers beneath the surface. Vast forests of crystalline pillars rose from frozen plains and sang whenever the wind passed between them, their delicate chiming carrying across empty white distances for hours, while frozen rivers reflected the frozen heavens so perfectly that flying above them felt like travelling between two skies.

The auroras were the part Phei loved most. He had seen auroras before with his parents once, but the beauty of then had started to fade away. Above the Primordial Frozen Zone, the lights sometimes stretched from one horizon to the other, enormous living curtains of green, violet, blue and occasional crimson folding across the stars.

They twisted around one another, broke apart, gathered again and spilled so much color over the frozen world that entire mountains glowed beneath them.

Phei had discovered this particular place several months earlier and immediately decided it belonged to them.

Their home had begun as a broad natural hollow carved into the side of an enormous glacial ridge overlooking a valley filled with blue-white crystal. Over the following days, Phei widened it with Void-Ice until the interior became a collection of connected spaces rather than a hole two absurdly powerful Dragons happened to occupy.

His own section sat inside the cavern where the wind barely reached, with thick beast pelts covered a wide sleeping platform shaped directly from smooth ice. Shelves and storage hollows had been carved into the surrounding walls and now held cores, meat, strange minerals and whatever miscellaneous treasures Phei had found interesting enough to drag home.

Near the middle stood a broad black-stone basin surrounded by several smaller surfaces Phei had shaped into something resembling a kitchen.

Neither of them needed a kitchen, yet that had never stopped him from using one. Whenever Phei cooked, a contained flame burned beneath the basin and filled the cavern with warmth and the smell of meat while the Dragon Lady watched him behave as though seasoning some beast qualified as a fundamental law of survival.

During their months here, Phei had discovered something rather strange about ordinary comforts. There was something addictive about mundane and mortal things once the body stopped requiring them:

Sleeping because warm pelts felt good rather than because exhaustion would eventually force the body unconscious, eating because meat tasted good rather than because starvation threatened death, sitting beside a flame despite being capable of surviving cold that would freeze ordinary cultivators solid, watching an aurora when either of them could have been cultivating beneath it and flying somewhere despite having nowhere they needed to reach all carried a peculiar satisfaction precisely because they were unnecessary.

His little sister had become fond of those things too, although she would probably have denied most of it if asked directly.

Her portion of the cavern occupied almost half their home. Phei had raised the ceiling high enough for her to move comfortably even if she entered with a big body, widened the floor until she could turn without scraping her wings against the walls and opened one entire side toward the valley so she could enter and leave without accidentally destroying half the house.

He refused to have a little sister whose bedroom required her to curl herself into something resembling luggage.

The funny part was that she barely slept there whenever Phei was home and sleeping too.

’She is a bit shy you see.’

Most nights, Phei would fall asleep while the Dragon Lady settled inside her enormous space with her forelegs folded beneath her chest. Sometimes she cultivated slowly while on other nights she simply stared through the wide opening toward the valley and allowed hours to pass without moving much at all.

Phei had awakened more than once in the middle of the night and found her in exactly the same position, quietly watching auroras move above distant mountains or following snow as it drifted through the darkness.

Perhaps spending hours doing almost nothing would have sounded boring to someone else, but Phei had stopped thinking that way once he understood how much of her existence had been spent imprisoned.

Someone who had lived centuries without freedom probably developed a very different appreciation for sitting somewhere simply because she was allowed to remain there.

Morning usually brought a completely different rhythm:

Phei would wake properly, stretch, complain about something unnecessary and drag them into another day. Sometimes he trained from sunrise until whatever passed for evening beneath the long frozen skies or they hunted food despite neither of them needing it, simply because returning home with some enormous beast and deciding which part tasted best had somehow become one of their routines.

On other days they abandoned every practical plan and just flew around.

Those were probably the Dragon Lady’s favorite days.

The Young Dragon himself had fallen in love with flight, and he found that endlessly amusing considering she loved it too yet she possessed wings large enough to darken whole portions of the sky when fully spread.

Once free to fly wherever she wanted, however, she approached the freedom with an enthusiasm that made it feel new every time. She would climb until the Frozen Zone disappeared beneath layers of cloud, spread her wings and glide through the high thin air while Phei sat between the crystalline ridges along her back.

Occasionally she would dive for absolutely no practical reason, folding her wings until mountains rushed toward them at terrifying speed before opening them again and climbing hard enough to roll entire storms beneath her.

Phei had accused her several times of trying to throw him off.

Her offended reactions had never convinced him.

When Phei left their home alone, though, his little sister followed a different routine.

That was when she transformed into her humanoid form and slept. Phei had only discovered that little habit because, for the first and last time, curiosity had gotten the better of him and he had secretly watched from a distance after pretending to leave. He had expected something vaguely majestic, perhaps an ancient-looking woman whose appearance matched the age carried inside that enormous Dragon soul:

—Instead, the colossal creature folded inward beneath pale frozen light until a girl who looked barely fifteen remained where a mountain-sized Dragon had been.

Phei had regretted spying on her almost immediately because he couldn’t trust her yet back then even after he saved her and shared a bond with her. Those were completely different things.

Weren’t they?

But it did not matter; his eyes still worked, and what they were presently telling him was that he had hidden himself in the Primordial Frozen Zone to spy on a fifteen-year-old girl getting ready to sleep.

’Fucking weird man. I didn’t mean too and its not like she was dressed inappropriately or something to feel this guilty but its still a bad habit!’

Yes, Phei was just seventeen himself, two years older than her or one and half, but compared to her he was considered an adult.

’After all minor can’t have a harem.’ Even if she was centuries old thanks to all those years as a prisoner, still a kid.

’Wait, why am I still explaining this even. I am only making myself sound like a fucking pedo.’

Anyway, Phei had murdered his curiosity with impressive efficiency.

Afterward, however, he understood her little secret. She would wait until he had disappeared far enough into the Primordial Frozen Zone before shrinking into that smaller human body, crawling beneath the warm blankets of the bed he had made for her and indulging in the same mortal comfort she pretended not to care about whenever he was nearby.

Apparently even an ancient Ice Dragon capable of flattening mountains had discovered that soft pillows, thick blankets and a properly warmed bed were extremely difficult enemies to resist.

If she wanted to pretend she had absolutely no interest in curling beneath warm furs and sleeping for several hours while he was gone, Phei was generous enough to protect her dignity.

Mostly.

The aurora continued drifting above him when blue light quietly appeared at the edge of his vision.

’Alright, you have something of mine, System.’