Chapter 746 — Dragon and Dragon

The frozen sea of the far north still carried its bitter, biting winds, but the eternal Great Barrier of Thalondor kept the dragons' homeland as warm and comfortable as ever.

Meheng Pernia awoke from her broad, soft bed, the familiar ceiling of her bedchamber reflected in her pale violet eyes. She stared blankly for several minutes, then blinked, drew a deep breath, and stretched out in a long, luxurious yawn.

"It's been so long since I slept in my own home..."

The blue dragoness murmured to herself, and lying lazily in bed, waved a hand to one side. The sensors set into the room received the command at once, and the slanted roof panel on one side of the chamber slid silently open; daylight poured in through the fully transparent polymer shell, scattering the dimness within, and one after another the various devices around the bedchamber stirred to life, a low hum rising from every direction.

A curtain of transparent polymer descended over the wall facing the bed, and upon it appeared a softly glowing ring of light. The edges of that image trembled as it produced a pleasant, mechanically synthesized voice: "Good afternoon, Meheng Pernia."

"Good afternoon, Omega..." Meheng rubbed her eyes and yawned, her reply slurred and indistinct—then, hearing her own words, she froze. "Huh? Afternoon?!"

"Yes. You have slept for eighteen hours. Please be at ease—this is normal. Your body required repair, especially your nervous system. Considerable sleep ensures your nerves recover as quickly as possible."

"But I had an appointment to meet with Speaker Anqian today!" Meheng cried out. "He'll kill me!!"

"Please be at ease, he will not. Speaker Anqian will merely deduct this month's Class II field stipend. There is no need for anxiety—it has already been deducted."

"...Damn it, I should have had you set an alarm! The kind that slaps you in the face with Arcane Missiles and Pyroblasts!" Meheng gave her hair a fierce tug, then, crestfallen, swung herself out of bed. "Fine, it's already this late anyway... draft an apology letter for me, and reschedule the appointment. And besides all this bad news—isn't there anything good?"

"Your heart has been recalibrated, and the spinal implant is fully prepared and ready for installation at any time."

"Well, that's something at least," Meheng shook her head, and still in her nightgown, headed for the bedchamber door. "Take me to the workshop... and get two units of 'Phantasm' booster ready for me while you're at it."

"At your service, Meheng."

The transport elevator installed within the dragon's lair ran silently and swiftly, and in a mere half minute carried Meheng from the bedchamber of her "humanoid residence" to her lair at the mountain's summit.

Stepping out of the elevator, Meheng entered a vast, enormous hemispherical hall. This immense interior space had been carved and rebuilt from the natural structure of the mountain: in its lower half great expanses of evenly hewn rock wall were still visible, and fixed upon those walls were quantities of polymer brackets and cable conduits, while the upper half was a tightly sealed alloy dome.

The hall was broad and open, yet all around its perimeter stood numerous mechanical devices and golden pillars engraved with intricate, magnificent patterns. Three of those pillars now stood in an active state, flowing light flickering across their surfaces, and within them certain objects could faintly be glimpsed.

This was Meheng's "dragon lair," a nest she had spent several thousand years painstakingly crafting. Compared with the "supremely ornate, exquisitely elaborate" style championed by most dragons of this age, her lair appeared rather plain—though in truth its décor had not always been this way.

She too had once installed a magnificent dome here, covered in full-relief carvings, and used palace-style arches and colonnades; she too had once heaped this place with gold and jewels (though to make up the bulk, some of it was glass and imitation polymer), sleeping atop an enormous treasure chest; she had even filled it with bookshelves that rose to the very dome, crammed with model books scavenged from secondhand markets...

And now, she had redecorated the place in the "classical workshop" style that had been fashionable in Thalondor some ten thousand years ago.

She was a dragon who loved change and was devoted to a style all her own.

Meheng came to the center of the circular hall and spread her arms; at once a brilliant halo of magic enveloped her. Within that radiance her body swiftly grew larger, transforming toward her dragon form, while the three softly glowing ornate pillars at the hall's edge glided silently to her side, their alloy shells slowly opening with a hiss of vented pressure.

Within them were colossal tubular crystal vessels filled with a pale, thin fluid. Two of the vessels held enormous hearts—each assembled from biological tissue, bionic skin, polymer tubing, and intricately structured mechanical pumps—while in the third vessel drifted quietly a length of spine glittering with metallic sheen, its connecting ends fitted with masses of cable ports and flickering runes.

A string of bubbles gurgled up through the vessel, and the metal spine turned half about, revealing two lines of sharply stamped letters on its back plate:

"THE SOUL WITHIN THE MACHINE REMAINS FREE"

"GOMODO IMPLANT CORPORATION DESIGN PATENT—INFRINGEMENT STRICTLY PROSECUTED"

The magical radiance gradually dispersed, and Meheng opened her eyes amid the fading light. She had become a dragon.

Gazing at those two enormous hearts soaking in their vessels, the great blue dragon rolled her neck and let out a rumbling sound: "I hear Barkbato Corporation has brought out a new auxiliary heart. Beautiful and handsome..."

"Pursuing such things to excess will do nothing to improve your financial situation," Omega's voice rang through the entire hall. "Moreover, there is no essential difference in performance between the new and old auxiliary hearts, and a handsome bionic skin serves no purpose whatsoever on an internal implant. Unless... you intend to replace the scales near your chest with transparent polymer?"

"Never mind, I'm broke," Meheng sighed. "Begin the implantation procedure—cheer me up..."

At once the mechanical devices standing ready throughout the hall started into motion, and a host of manipulators came to the blue dragon Meheng's side in seamless coordination, beginning to detach the scales and inner protective layers that belonged to her mechanical structure. Her chest cavity was opened, revealing the hollow within, filled with temporary buffer fluid; her back was opened, revealing the temporary neural connectors and the body-fluid circulation pump inside...

The hearts were returned to their places, the spine repaired as good as new, and the booster prepared in advance was injected into the circulation pump, setting these organ-components—roused from dormancy—merrily running within mere moments.

The booster began to take effect upon her nervous system, and Meheng felt her thoughts slowly diffuse and spread; thoughts beyond her control began to surface, and her great eyes stared into midair, where it seemed a phantom of Omega's interface coalesced at the focus of her gaze.

But she knew this was only an illusion produced by her own nervous system—there was no visual medium of Omega here. What she saw was in fact a phantom conjured when the resonance core within her skull stimulated her nerves.

That resonance core that accompanied every dragon throughout life, that neural interface system linking all citizens of Thalondor together, that superintelligence pervading the entire dragon nation and controlling the workings of all Thalondor... Omega was here, controlling every machine in this hall, controlling these instruments that were nominally medical devices but could turn lethal at any moment.