They stepped into Vasuki's pocket like stepping through a throat. The seam opened with the same cold, iron smell as before and swallowed them into the serpent's private wasteland: a bleak plain under a void sky where wind tasted of ozone and stone. Helios moved first, heavy with the Ten‑Thousand‑Flames fruit still warm in his talons. The fruit's heat bled into him as he walked; red feathers along his wings began to shimmer and shift. Indra and Dionysus watched, small and curious, as gold threaded through Helios's plumage—first a feather here, then a patch there—until the Phoenix's aura hummed with a new balance of red and gold.
They did not see the last of it. Vasuki closed the seam behind them and the private space swallowed the final change. Helios tucked the fruit away and folded into a deep, dreamless sleep inside the serpent's hollow, the last feathers turning while the others watched the sky and the plain. Indra padded close enough to see the faint glow under Helios's eyelids; Dionysus leaned in and sniffed the air, tasting sun and ash. Both felt the shift like a promise.
Vasuki rose then, coiling until his length became a dark comet against the void. He did not walk; he unmade distance. The world outside the pocket folded and blurred beneath him. Rivers became threads, mountains streaks of stone, and days of travel collapsed into hours. Indra felt the wind sharpen into knives and the taste of storm on his tongue; Dionysus laughed at the speed, a sound that scattered phantom birds from the void. The bonds clung to the serpent's back and rode the wake of his passage.
When the blur stopped they stood at the foot of a mountain crowned by a living storm. A low cloud clung to the peak, and the air hummed with pressure—wind and lightning braided into a single, hungry note. The mountain was a landmark they had seen far to the west, now immediate and raw.
Vasuki's head turned, slow and deliberate. He pointed with the tip of his snout and said one word that carried like a command and a benediction. "Conquer."
Indra's cub form tightened. The small tiger's chest puffed with a fierce, sudden gravity. He shifted, fur bristling, and the world answered: at Tier‑6 he became five meters long, three meters tall, as wide as a cart, white fur crackling with lightning and wrapped in a wind aura that made the grass bow away from him. He tasted the mountain and felt it answer back—prey, challenge, a path.
Dionysus padded to the base of the slope and sniffed the air, already tasting the promise of battle. Vasuki coiled above her like a dark sun, patient and enormous.
Indra took the first step and the mountain took the second.
The first drake was a flash of navy and white before Indra could name it. It dropped from a ledge with a scream that was half thunder, scales glinting like wet stone, four muscular limbs driving it forward. White lightning ran along its flanks like armor; its mouth spat a jagged bolt that split the air.
Indra did not hesitate. He became wind and was beside the drake before its breath finished. Wind Walker was not teleportation so much as becoming the current—he phased into the gust and reappeared with the speed of a storm. His jaws closed on the drake's skull and the head came away in a spray of blue blood and sparks. He tossed the corpse aside and moved on.
For a while the mountain offered only single opponents. One drake at a time, isolated and fierce, fell to the tiger's teeth and claws. Indra moved like a hunting wind: a slash of Storm Slash here, a Wind Blade there, a bite that siphoned lightning into his veins. Each kill fed him, each corpse a small, immediate lesson in how the mountain fought back.
The higher he climbed the more the drakes came in numbers. Where the slope narrowed and the wind sharpened, packs waited.
They hit the middle of the mountain like a trap. Ten drakes erupted from the rock—wings beating a gale, teeth bared, a leader larger and older than the rest. Four Tier‑7s lunged at once, a coordinated strike that tested the tiger's reflexes.
Indra moved with the storm in his bones. He spun Storm Slash and cleaved two drakes in half, the air around him singing with the sound of torn scales. He used Wind Blade to shear a limb from a third, but the motion left his flank exposed. A lightning claw found him, raking a deep, hot line across his side. Pain flared, white and immediate, but he did not slow.
He answered with a Lightning Fang, sinking teeth into a drake's throat and drawing its crackling energy into himself. The stolen lightning flared through his veins and he used it to tear a chunk from the beast's flank. The third drake, wounded and furious, struck from the side while the others unleashed a storm of breath attacks. Indra took a sacrifice—he twisted his body to avoid the worst of the lightning and took a claw to the ribs that left him gashed and breathing hard.
When the dust settled five drakes lay broken and smoking. Indra's white fur was streaked with red; his breath came in ragged pulls. He looked up at the sky and felt the storm's calm settle into him like a hand on his head. The mountain had tested him and he had answered, but the real test waited above.
Indra drew on the storm. He felt it in the hair on his back, in the crackle of the air, in the way the grass bent away from his paws. His black and green stripes began to glow, veins of power threading through his fur. He roared and the sound was a blade that cut the wind.
He called Tempest Tornado.
The mountain answered. A green vortex formed, a tornado crackling with lightning and lined with wind blades a meter long. It ripped across the slope like a living thing, shredding drakes and tearing at rock. The Tier‑8 leader reacted with cunning: it shoved two Tier‑7s in front of itself like shields and twisted the tornado's color to red, dampening its bite. The tornado took one drake and spat another into a cliff face, but the leader's gambit bought it time.
Indra used Wind Walker to vanish into the gust and reappear behind a stunned drake, killing it with a single, precise strike. Another drake struck him with a lightning spear that punched through his flank and a tail blow that sent him skidding. He fought through the pain, teeth bared, claws flashing. The tornado carved a path of chaos; when it passed the slope was a smear of blood and torn wings.
Only one drake remained—one ragged Tier‑8 leader, breathing hard and watching the tiger with a new, wary respect.
The leader moved like a thing that had seen death and decided to make it a bargain. It lunged with a neck bite aimed for Indra's throat. Indra dodged and struck a paw into the drake's stomach, leaving a gash that steamed with molten blood. The drake's tail lashed and sent him flying; he hit rock and rolled, tasting grit and iron.
He had seen Sam use a technique once, a prison of crackling energy that could hold even the most furious beast. Indra had watched and learned. He gathered the storm around him and cast Lightning Prison—a cage of crackling blue that snapped into being around the Tier‑8. The drake thrashed, scales sparking against the bars, but it could not break free.
Indra did not hesitate. He poured everything he had into a single, brutal sequence: ten wind blades condensed and launched with the force of a gale. They struck the trapped drake like spears of storm. The cage amplified the blades' fury; the drake's body tore apart in a spray of blue blood and lightning. When the last blade fell the mountain was quiet enough to hear the wind sigh.
Indra slumped to the ground, every muscle trembling. He had killed the leader, but the cost was written in his wounds. He lay panting and watched the clouds roll by, knowing the peak still waited.
The final climb was a slow, aching thing. Indra picked off lone drakes and scavenged small meals from the carcasses to stitch his strength back together. The storm thinned and then thickened again as he neared the top. When he crested the last ridge the world opened into a crater.
A dragon lay in the hollow like a mountain that had been cut in half. Blue and silver scales were torn and scattered; wings were broken and folded like ruined sails. Near the carcass three drakes fed, their scales already bright with the taste of higher tier. Off to the side, half buried in ash and broken bone, a Sapphire egg gleamed like a promise.
Indra understood the story in a single, bitter breath. A pregnant Dragon had crashed here—injured, given birth, and died. The Drakes and scavengers had fed and risen in tier on the mother's blood. The mountain had become a magnet for drakes, a place where death fed life and life fed power.
He looked at the three near‑Tier‑9 drakes and felt the storm tighten in his chest. This would be the final test.
Indra drew the storm into himself until he felt like a living conduit. Lightning braided through his fur and wind wrapped his limbs. He floated, small and terrible, until the clouds took him in. The drakes below looked up and their eyes went wide with a fear that tasted like survival.
He called the name that had been whispered in the thunder: Storm God's Fury.
Silence fell like a held breath. Ten pillars of green and black lightning stabbed down from the clouds and pinned the three drakes in place. The pillars hummed and filled the prison with lethal current; the drakes convulsed as the lightning ate through scale and bone. When the pillars withdrew a massive wind blade swept through the crater, a blade of air that cleared the field of anything that could stand.
When the wind died there was only blood mist and two troop tokens left where three drakes had been. Indra fell from the sky and reverted to cub form, small and ragged, fur matted with blood and storm residue. He had given everything and taken more than he had expected.
Vasuki landed beside him with a sound like distant thunder and coiled protectively. He moved to the dragon carcass and, with a practiced motion, plucked the heart and core from the shattered chest. It pulsed with storm and water and wind magic—raw, furious energy. "A Hurricane Dragon," Vasuki said. "Why it crashed here I do not know. But this will make you stronger."
Dionysus padded over carrying the Sapphire egg, eyes bright with the thrill of spoils. "Deliver it to Sam," Vasuki said. "This is a spoil of war earned by Indra."
Indra ate the dragon's heart and began to glow in Vasuki's coils and felt something like a new current settle into him. He was exhausted to the bone and hungry for sleep, but the thought of Sam's bed and a warm meal steadied him. Dionysus climbed onto Vasuki's head with a satisfied grin and the group turned for home as dusk bled into night.
They arrived as the castle lights blinked on. Helios slept like a furnace, the Ten‑Thousand‑Flames settled into him and his aura hummed with new depth. Indra curled at Sam's feet, small and spent, and Dionysus chattered about the taste of dragon flesh. Vasuki carried the Hurricane Dragon core like a trophy and the Sapphire egg like a promise.
Inside the throne room Sam felt the surge before he saw them. The torrent of experience that had been feeding the domain's bonds finally broke through his own shell. He had been holding the energy back, steadying it, but the flood could not be contained. With a sound like a struck bell his body shifted and he crossed fully into Tier‑8. Power rolled through him—five times the strength he had known the day before—and the room seemed to tilt under the new weight.
Vlad watched with a slow, satisfied smile. Baloo padded at the foot of the throne and the Kings Guard Golems stood like pillars of iron. The Vasuki clone coiled at Sam's side, eyes like distant stars. The throne room was a tableau of new scale and new danger.
Outside, the mountain's wreckage and the drakes' unusual tiers would be a story that spread. The Hurricane Dragon core and the Sapphire egg were on their way to Sam's vault, and with them came questions: who had driven a dragon from the sky, and why did titans gather and die in patterns that smelled of ritual?
Indra slept and dreamed of storms. Sam sat very still on the throne and let the new power settle into him like a second skin. The world had shifted again; the question was no longer whether he could steer the change but how he would survive the attention it would bring.