Chapter 971: The Blue Ice Slide
Chapter 971: The Blue Ice Slide
"Will it matter if It wore my clothes or not? It's stupidly cold anyway." Isdis looked at Isbert with a doubtful face.
"Your clothes and armor would shatter from the cold. Remember that your blood doesn't flow into your garments. But if you find anything nice to buy in the city below, you can wear that." Isbert stood from her throne and called two maids to follow her. "Kory will guide you through the city, I've got some work to finish first." She looked at the maid standing beside her.
"My queen, a lot had piled up today. The coal mines and the lava spring require some attention." The maid handed her several stacks of papers. In this world managing heat is the most important thing of all to keep them from freezing to death.
"Let's go, the queen is busy." Kory dragged Isdis out by hand and closed the door to the throne room. "We were fighting just moments ago, right?" Isdis glared at her.
"I only follow the queen's orders. I don't care what those orders are." Kory looked at Isdis, "She asked me to fight you, and so I did. Now she asked me to take you on a tour across the capital, and that's what I'll do whether you like it or not."
Isdis gave Kory a side eye, doubting her words, she sure seemed loyal but something was off. "Let's see... you better do a good job giving me a tour or you'll be in trouble."
Kory looked away, "Mind your business." She looked worried and Isdis knew she hit it straight...
"Wait...how bad are you?" Isdis started to get worried, she guessed that Kory might not be that good at following orders since her mother Gamond had warned her about making a mistake before when they were fighting...but she didn't expect it to be a common occurrence. "I said mind your business!" Kory started walking in the front, "Follow me and stop talking." She growled, walking as fast as she could so as not to give Isdis a chance to speak.
Isdis hesitantly followed her, worried about what was to come, even with how powerful Kory was, she did not look reliable anymore.
After several minutes, the two reached a massive steel gate, "We've arrived at our first stop." Kory said with a smile and a proud face, her fists resting on her hips.
The massive gate looked like a double door but stood fifty meters tall, enough for dragons to use in their draconic form. The size of this castle quickly made Isdis dizzy, but it wasn't strange considering that most of the residents here were dragons and not humans.
"Great wyrms are too big to pass through," Isdis said, looking at Kory. "How could someone like your mother go out?"
"Not all chromatic dragons can take a human form, only those who worship Tiamat can. But that doesn't mean they can't use size magic to get smaller." Kory looked at Isdis as she explained as if all of this was her achievement. "We have fairies here that are masters of size magic."
Isdis could remember well that Zephyr could use that magic as well. It sounded like quite the peculiar magic to master and use, but now it seems to be a lifesaver for dragons. For a second she thought, "Arad might be able to use that." She said her thoughts out loud and Kory looked at her with a passive face.
"Of course he could, learning it isn't easy but it's doable for anyone. He can use it to get smaller and fit through human buildings if he wanted."
Hearing Kory's explanation, Isdis giggled with a worried face, glad that Kory seemed to be a bit dense and didn't catch up. "Yeah...you're right." Isdis replied...she was thinking about asking Arad to use it in bed since he's too big for her.
Kory lifted an eyebrow as she noticed the troubled expressions on Isdis's face."Oi! You thought I was dumb, didn't you?" She growled. Since Kory had seen her mother make that expression a lot when talking with her, she had gotten used to picking up on it, especially when people were taking her for a fool.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om
"I swear by all the gods I never thought you of as a fool or dumb." Isdis replied with a straight face. ^I thought of you as a virgin though...^
"Right... you aren't lying." Kory could sense that Isdis was saying the truth, but couldn't wash the itch in the back of her head that she was still taking her for a fool. She decided to ignore the thought and focused on her work.
"This gate, or door, call it whatever you like. It doesn't take us outside, but to the road, we use it to travel across the castle. We'll use it to get outside, but be warned, it's quite fast." Kory pushed the door open, and a long hallway appeared, Isdis couldn't even see its end.
The hallway's floor was made of polished blue ice, and the walls were made of ancient black stone illuminated by glowing blue crystals. With a flick of her finger, Kory pulled a wooden boat and laid it on the ice. "Jump in." Kory stepped into the tiny boat and called Isdis to sit behind her.
"Why do I feel this is unsafe?" Isdis stared at her, not willing to set a single foot on the shady boat.
"Don't worry, not a single dragon died here." Kory replied with a large smile, but Isdis could see a faint twitch at the side of her lips.
"No dragon died, but how many humans died?" Isdis glared at her and Kory's expression changed, she looked away and started sweating.
"I'm a princess, do you know how many lies I get told by nobles each day? I can tell when you're trying to scam me. Mixing truth with lies or omitting facts isn't going to help." Isdis
sighed.
"This year? Around ten humans died, most of them fell out of the boat, and one died in a crash." Kory replied, "This boat can get quite fast, and controlling it is hard."
Isdis slowly walked into the boat and sat down, "Fine, we have to use it to go outside, right?"
"You're getting in any way?" Kory gasped as she stared at her in surprise.
"My husband will rip you apart if anything happens to me. So I guess you'll have to do your best." Kory heard Isdis's words and quickly remembered who she was with, that woman was Arad Orion's wife.
Since Isbert started training Isdis, the dragons in her world heard stories about Arad Orion from her each day. They heard how Arad barged into their training on the first day, how he fought, and how Isbert used her final move to stop him. Not a single dragon in this whole world could hope to get Isbert to pull that move, but she pulled it against him.
Kory had once thought of checking Arad, but after her mother went after him today, she started thinking she needed to back away. If he's strong enough to challenge her mother, she probably isn't at his level and would be just ignored.
Kory pushed them against the ground with her tail and the boat started sliding forward on the blue ice, accelerating rapidly until it started zipping around fast enough that Isdis had to hold on for dear life.
"The queen made this blue ice using her magic to compact and compress normal ice to increase its hardness and smoothness. We polish those paths each day with magic to make sure they are as slippery as possible and offer the fastest slides in this whole world." Kory lifted her fist and the scales on her forearm started glowing.
Circles of magic danced around her arm as the hallway flashed with multiplied shades of blue. Isdis's ears flew back as she cried, the boat got faster and faster to the point she could feel her
guts crushing her chest up.
Unlike Arad who used his gravity magic to make riding on his back comfortable, this boat had nothing and Isdis felt the entire pressure of moving at such speed. That made her both grateful for Arad's thoughtfulness and terrified knowing he could move even faster than this.
The boat slid left and right, spinning up and down like it was a wild ride in the park. For a moment it seemed to be designed to kill the riders, but in reality, it was just sliding by all the layers of the castle and floors before getting out.
Soon, with Kory's magic the boat started slowing down. After a minute of slowing down, it finally came to a full stop before a massive steel door, this one had ice slowly emerging from its hinges and massive keyhole. The frigid ice world was just behind that massive steel wall.
"Let's get out!" Kory jumped out of the boat and looked back, finding Isdis throwing on inside the boat, unable to stand straight from how dizzy she got. "Wait! Are you dying?!" Kory cried, Isbert would skin her alive if she let Isdis get hurt.
"Just...give me a second..." Isdis looked at her with a sick face, her eyes darkening and her breath unsteady, her yellowish pale face said it all, one more minute and she would've passed
out.
"Should I get you some water?!" Kory in a panic waved her hand and conjured a water bottle out of nowhere, diddling around her, more confused than a kid in math class.