[Realm of death]
After Yldra had returned with the rest of their group in tow, it had taken another hour and a half before they finished their farewells.
Between the fact that it had been planned for a long time and how short a few weeks were compared to the long lifespans of everyone present, the mood throughout this remained fairly positive, with their victory celebration somewhat mixing into the farewell. However, with the exhaustion from the battle still fresh, these celebrations ended rather quickly once Darganth had said his farewells.
With this, Darganth then set off into the realm of death. Plunging into the ever-shifting currents of life and death that formed its landscape, he spread his wings and soared through the fake air.
Around him, small flashes erupted as necrotic energy and vitality collided with his protection spell, causing the energies to briefly revert to their real form before completely fading from view. As Darganth passed by, they briefly reappeared as gray strands of energy in his wake, with the illusion of a physical world layering itself over them shortly after and bringing the area back to its original state.
Already familiar with the phenomenon, Darganth didn't pay this any attention and let his gaze sweep across the landscape. Starting at the mountain range that towered to his left, he let his attention linger only briefly on the towering peaks before turning toward the frozen tundra dead ahead of him. To the right, this then bordered a stretch of barren, rocky terrain, with a small sea being visible to Darganth behind them.
Only at the border between all of these different terrains, however, did the true nature of the realm he was in shine through. There, thin strands of necrotic energy emerged from the ground, snaking along the border and forming a partially transparent curtain of energy that separated the different terrains.
From above, the same thing was repeated in reverse, just with vitality instead. Simply appearing out of the endless white expanse visible between the different artificial skies, the strands of vitality reached downward and connected with the necrotic energy that rose out of the ground. And though both faded into yet another part of the illusionary reality layered over the realm, to both Darganth's draconic eyes and mana sense, the barrier their connection formed was perfectly visible. Cutting the realm into individual segments, it was what allowed areas where there was darkest night to exist next to ones where a blinding sun shone or deserts to exist next to snow.
Within a minute of exiting the death nexus, Darganth reached the first of these barriers. Briefly pausing and throwing a last glance behind him to make sure there weren't any lingering souls in the previous portion of the realm, he then dashed through the barrier with a beat of his wings.
The moment his head entered the interwoven strands of vitality and necrotic energy, Darganth sensed Elementals rushing at him. Emerging from their respective parts of the realm, dark figures whose form consists of necrotic energy in various forms flew up from below the earth, while creatures radiating pure life and vitality shot down from above.
Ignoring them for a moment and weathering the attacks that soon reached him, he made it his first priority to fully cross the border between the different terrains. Ripping through the strands of the barrier that tried to drag him back, he pushed himself fully through the barrier with a beat of his wings.
The moment he distanced himself from it, the stream of new Elementals ceased. And with it, Darganth was free to turn his attention toward those that had already entered the layer of the realm he was in.
Sweeping his gaze over this group, Darganth confirmed his expectations that these were all merely Lesser Elementals. Unlike the older members of their kind who possessed sapience at least close to the major humanoid races, these individuals lacked individual thoughts and acted purely on instinct. As such, when the contact between Darganth's protective spells and the barrier between regions had sent ripples through the latter, these Elementals had been drawn toward the source of the disturbance.
But even though all of them were Lesser Elementals, Darganth made sure to do a second sweep to gauge their power. While rare, because the status as Lesser Elemental is the cause of their near total lack of sentience, it was still possible for one such Elemental to possess power rivaling that of gods.
However, that wasn't the case in the group before Darganth. As such, when the closest Elemental, one formed from necrotic energy, lunged at him, Darganth didn't even bother raising his arms defensively. Instead reeling back with his claws, he let this first Elemental harmlessly strike against his chest and swung at the rest of the group.
Tearing through them with a wide swing, his first strike already bisected half of the group. With his second swing, he then scattered the rest, his closed fist crushing some and throwing the rest back into the barrier between the regions.
Despite their highly instinct-driven thought process, this got the message through to them. Using the opportunity to make a clean getaway, most of the two dozen remaining Elementals disappeared as they retreated back along the barrier.
Sweeping his gaze across those that remained, Darganth took a brief moment to grumble over the realm's limitations before pushing himself toward them. With magic almost impossible to project past his control shield's range due to the realm's makeup of raw death elemental energy, even if it was highly diluted in this surface region, Darganth was forced to chase after the remaining Elementals.
Consequently, it took him much longer to deal with the Elementals than if he could've used magic, a fact that frustrated him. Spending the next minute clearing the last remnants of the group, when he finally could turn his attention back to his original objective, he let out a sigh before sweeping his gaze across the region he now found himself in.
Growling slightly when he nonetheless still didn't find what he was searching for, Darganth shook his head as he accelerated toward the next border. Exiting the frozen tundra soon after, he once more sighed before dashing through the barrier toward the mountain range. Again, Elementals started surging forth in response, drawn in by the ripples his magic sent through the barrier and unaware of the altercation he had with others of their kin just a few kilometers away.
Considering how space and distance warped once one entered the deeper regions of elemental realms, Darganth even doubted that the Elementals from either half of the realm had seen their kin enter the middle layer. While the two locations were a mere half a dozen kilometers apart for him, once outside of the middle layer in which he was, distance became an ever-shifting construct as the spatial plane's influence started to be impeded by the dense concentrations of either vitality or necrotic energy. And while he often found this to be a beneficial trait, at the moment, it annoyed him to no end.
However, he couldn't do anything but mull over it while he fought back the group of Elementals attacking him. Even if he were to chase after them, something he wasn't sure he could do as his protective spells might not hold up to the strain of defending against either polarity of death magic without having the other also present to counterbalance it, it was unlikely that any higher Elementals would care enough to rein in their lesser kin. If he had access to his full magical might, he might've been able to strong-arm some of them to do so, but that possibility was merely wishful thinking in an elemental realm.
As such, Darganth was forced to repeat the same repetitive cycle time after time as he searched through region after region. Needing about five to ten minutes for each, with a majority of this being spent on the search itself, it took him over half a day and over a hundred searched regions before he finally found what he was looking for.
Already sensing the lingering souls the moment he crossed the barrier, his eyes lit up with a mix of elation and relief even as Elementals started swarming behind him. Ignoring them this time, he trusted in the durability of his scales and let their attacks bounce off them as he dove toward the souls.
Arriving above them a couple of seconds later, he unfurled his wings to come to a rapid stop and started hovering in place.
Despite his massive draconic form suddenly appearing overhead, the souls that stood idly mere meters beneath him didn't react. Consisting of eleven individuals, of which two were humanoids while the rest were various animals, the members of the group kept staring blankly into random directions.
However, that wasn't really surprising for Darganth. Having died only recently, as in within the past minute, their consciousness hadn't yet gotten the time to adapt to their new state as a wandering soul. And if all goes as intended, it won't adapt to the change before the soul is collected and transported to Cehlya's realm, where it then wakes up in the Fields of Death.
Soon after Darganth's arrival, this collection started. First showing itself through pieces of the surroundings that disintegrated into streams of gray energy, something that was shortly followed by entire patches of soil crumbling away beneath the group.
At the edges, these holes consisted of streams of black energy that seemed to drain downward from the surrounding soil. Through them, more and more ground was broken off, slowly expanding the gaping holes and causing them to merge one by one.
Simultaneously, a bright and welcoming glow shone out from somewhere deep underground. As it appeared, the unresponsive souls, or at least the nine that hadn't already fallen in one of the holes, slowly turned toward the light and started moving. One after another, they then started to drop into the still-expanding gap in the earth, with the last one disappearing beneath the ground barely ten seconds after the process started.
Watching all of this unfold from above, Darganth waited a few seconds longer until the patchwork of gaps had turned into one massive hole before diving into it himself. Immediately being plunged into darkness, he floated weightlessly in the dark tunnel he then found himself in, with the light at the other end not being a helpful indicator for determining how far he had already moved.
Letting the minutes pass in this total silence, Darganth was forced to wait. Soon, losing track of time as he meditated to further improve his mana control during this, he didn't know how much time had passed when a familiar feeling appeared on his mana sense some time later.
Immediately jolting up, he just about managed to spread his wings before abruptly reaching the light at the end of the tunnel, making him ready as he shot out into the open. Flung into the air by his momentum, this decision then also directly proved itself correct as he found himself dozens of meters into the air, prompting him to spread his wings further to catch himself before gravity could drag him back down.
Hovering in the air, Darganth then swept his gaze across the fields he was now floating above. Feeling nostalgic from the familiar sight, his mouth curled up into a soft smile before he announced his return to Cehlya's kingdom with a booming roar.