Side Story Arc: The Whispering Zephyrs and the Hidden Kingdom
Chapter 10: System Update - The Tech Variable
Deep at the very bottom of the Golden Lake, the Guardian Dragon was resting.
It was totally dark down there. The water was incredibly heavy. The weight of the deep water would crush a normal human like a tin can in less than a second. But the Dragon was not human. He was an ancient, magical god. The heavy water felt like a warm, safe blanket wrapping around his giant, scaled body.
The Dragon was asleep, but his mind was fully awake.
Inside the Dragon's mind was the Celestial Matrix. It was the giant, glowing golden System that controlled all the magic in the hidden mountain of Ta Lo. The System looked like a massive library made of pure light.
Right now, the golden library was very busy.
The System was sorting the new memories that the spies, Jin and Suyin, had just brought back. The Dragon watched the golden text scroll across his mind. He looked carefully at every picture, every sound, and every feeling the spies had sent him.
The Dragon did not feel fear. Gods do not feel fear like humans do. But the Dragon did feel a very strong sense of warning.
He looked at the memory of the dark warehouse in Berlin. He watched the simple bullet hit the chunk of gray metal. He watched the metal eat the pushing force perfectly.
[Reviewing File: Vibranium.]
[Status: Highly Dangerous to Magical Attacks.]
Then, the Dragon looked at the memory of the hot African jungle. He watched the twelve War Dogs drop from the green trees. He saw their sleek, black suits. He saw the glowing blue spears and the bright purple shields of energy.
The Dragon understood the problem perfectly.
For many years, the Dragon thought the outside world was messy and weak. He thought normal humans only used loud guns and dirty machines. He thought the magic of Ta Lo was the strongest power on the planet Earth.
But the hidden city of Wakanda changed all the rules.
Wakanda did not use magic. They used very advanced science. They used the special gray metal from the stars to build tools that acted just like magic. Their energy shields could block a powerful blast of fire. Their black suits could stop a heavy rock thrown by an Earthbender.
The Shadow Pact that Jin and Suyin had made was a very good idea. Peace was the best choice right now. But the Guardian Dragon was very old and very wise. He knew that peace never lasted forever.
One day, maybe many years from now, the hidden mountain of Ta Lo and the hidden city of Wakanda might have to fight. And if they fought today, the science of Wakanda might defeat the magic of Ta Lo.
The Dragon knew he had to fix this problem. He had to prepare his people.
But the Dragon was not the only powerful being watching the world change.
Thousands of miles away, across the deep ocean, a woman was sitting in a dark, dusty room.
Her name was Agatha Harkness.
Agatha was a witch. She was very old, even though she looked like a normal, middle-aged woman. She had lived for hundreds of years. She knew all the dark secrets of the world. She knew how to read old, evil spell books. She knew how to steal magic from other witches.
Agatha wore a dark purple dress. She was sitting at a heavy wooden table inside a hidden cabin deep in the woods of America.
On the table in front of her was a large, silver bowl filled with dark water.
Agatha was using her magic to watch the world. She slowly moved her fingers over the silver bowl. Her hands glowed with a dark, smoky, purple light. She was looking for large bursts of power. She was always hungry for new magic to steal.
Suddenly, the dark water in the bowl began to shake.
Agatha stopped moving her hands. Her dark eyes narrowed. She leaned closer to the bowl.
She felt a massive pulse of energy coming from far away. It was coming from the hot jungles of Africa. She had felt the powerful blast when Jin used his wind magic to create a vacuum, and when the Wakandan guard used his suit to make a huge shockwave.
"What is that?" Agatha whispered to herself. Her voice was scratchy and cold.
She pushed more of her purple magic into the water. The water began to glow. A picture slowly appeared in the dark liquid. It was like looking through a magical television screen.
Agatha looked into the bowl and saw the muddy jungle clearing.
She saw the giant, glowing purple energy wall of Wakanda. Agatha smiled a little bit. She knew about Wakanda. All the very old, very smart magic users knew rumors about the hidden city of the Panther God. She knew they used shiny metal and advanced science. Science bored her. She did not care about flying ships or energy spears.
She was about to wave her hand and clear the picture away.
But then, she saw the two people standing in front of the Wakandan guards.
Agatha stopped breathing. She stared at the picture in the water.
She saw Suyin. She watched the woman in the blue silk robes raise her empty hands. Agatha watched in total shock as Suyin pulled pure water right out of the hot jungle air. She watched Suyin freeze the water into sharp, deadly ice whips without saying a single magic spell.
Then, Agatha looked at Jin. She watched the man in the gray silk robes. She saw the air spin around his hands like invisible knives. She saw how his feet did not touch the mud, and how he made no sound at all.
"Impossible," Agatha hissed softly.
She grabbed the edges of the silver bowl tightly. Her purple magic sparked and popped around her fingers.
Agatha had studied magic for centuries. She knew how magic was supposed to work. Witches had to read thick books. They had to say long, strange words in old languages. They had to draw circles on the floor and pull dark power from other, scary dimensions.
But the two people in the jungle were not doing any of that.
They were not using dark magic. They were not pulling power from demons or ghosts.
They were pulling power from nature itself. They were using the wind and the water as if the elements were parts of their own bodies. It was clean, pure, and incredibly strong. It was a kind of magic Agatha had never seen before in all her long years of life.
She watched the standoff. She saw Suyin's ice whips crash against the Wakandan energy shields. She saw the pure power of the ice and the wind fighting against the advanced metal.
Agatha did not care about the Wakandan guards. She only cared about Jin and Suyin.
"You do not use spells," Agatha whispered, talking to the picture in the water. Her dark eyes were wide with shock, but also with a very deep, greedy interest. "You do not use chaos magic. You just... command the world. And the world listens to you."
Agatha watched as Jin and Suyin bowed their heads. She watched them make the Shadow Pact with the Wakandan leader. She watched them promise to keep the secrets.
Then, she watched Suyin bend the light and turn completely invisible. She watched Jin step into the empty air and vanish.
The picture in the dark water faded away. The bowl became quiet and still again.
Agatha Harkness sat back in her wooden chair. The dark cabin was silent.
A slow, wicked smile spread across her face.
She had thought she knew every magic secret on Earth. She had thought she knew every witch and wizard. But she was wrong. There was a whole group of people out there who had a completely different kind of power. A pure, natural power that did not need books or spells.
"Where do you come from, little ghosts?" Agatha said into the dark room.
She raised her hand. A ball of dark purple magic danced on her palm. She squeezed her hand shut, crushing the purple light.
"I will find you," Agatha promised herself. "I will find your hidden home. I will watch you. And one day, I will take that beautiful, pure power for myself."
Agatha Harkness began to plan. She knew the world was getting louder and more crowded. She knew that even the best secrets could not stay hidden forever. She would wait patiently in the shadows. When the time was right, the witch would go hunting.
While the witch was planning in America, the Guardian Dragon was planning at the bottom of the Golden Lake.
The Dragon did not know about Agatha Harkness yet. The Dragon was focused on the problem of the gray metal and the energy shields.
The Dragon knew he needed to upgrade the magic of Ta Lo. He needed to push a patch to the System, just like a computer programmer fixes a broken game.
He opened the glowing golden files of the Earth Temple.
Right now, the Earthbenders could only control dirt, mud, sand, and rock. They could throw giant boulders. They could build massive walls of stone. They were very strong.
But against a Wakandan flying ship made of Vibranium, throwing a rock was useless. The metal would just eat the rock.
The Dragon looked at the golden math of the world.
What is metal?
Metal is just rock that has been cleaned and heated up. Even the special gray Vibranium metal came from a rock that fell from the stars. Deep inside every piece of metal, there are still tiny, microscopic pieces of earth mixed in.
The Dragon began to write new golden text in his mind.
He started to build a brand new magic skill for the Earth Temple. He called it [Metalbending].
He wrote the rules carefully. He made it so an Earthbender could learn to feel the tiny pieces of dirt hidden inside a piece of metal. If they could feel the dirt, they could control the metal. They could bend a steel door. They could crush a metal gun.
But the Dragon knew this new magic was very hard and very dangerous. It required a mind that was perfectly calm and incredibly strong. A normal Earthbender could not do it.
So, the Dragon put a heavy lock on the new skill.
[System Update: Earth Temple Skill Tree.]
[New Sub-Art Created: Metalbending.]
[Status: LOCKED.]
[Requirement: Earthbender must reach Level 50 and master Absolute Seismic Sense to unlock.]
The Dragon smiled in the dark water. The lock was very heavy. It might take fifty years or a hundred years before an Earthbender in Ta Lo was smart enough and strong enough to find the key. But the seed was planted. When the time came, Ta Lo would be ready to fight back against the metal machines of the outside world.
Next, the Dragon looked at the files for all the Vanguard warriors.
He saw how the Wakandan energy shields vibrated very fast to break Suyin's ice needles. He needed to protect his warriors from vibrating weapons.
The Dragon wrote more golden text.
He pushed a small, invisible update to every single person in Ta Lo. It was a new defensive rule.
[System Update: Global Defense Parameters.]
[Patch Applied: Kinetic Oscillation Resistance.]
[Status: All Ta Lo citizens now possess a 15% natural resistance to high-frequency vibrating attacks.]
It was a small change, but it would help. If a Vanguard warrior ever had to fight a Wakandan War Dog again, the blue energy spears would not cut through their magic as easily as before. The System would protect them.
The updates were finished.
The massive golden library inside the Dragon's mind glowed very brightly for a few seconds. Then, the new rules settled into place. The new magic was hidden in the dirt. The new defenses were locked into the blood of the people.
The System returned to its quiet, normal humming sound.
The Guardian Dragon let out a long, slow breath. Massive bubbles of air floated up from his mouth, rising thousands of feet through the heavy water to pop silently on the surface of the golden lake.
The Dragon had done his job. He had seen the danger of the changing world. He had seen the machines and the special metal. He had updated his beautiful, perfect weapon to make sure it would not break.
The world outside the Bamboo Maze was spinning faster and faster. The normal humans were building their atomic bombs. The hidden people of Wakanda were building their shiny silver ships. And far away in a dark cabin, a wicked witch with purple magic was watching the shadows, hungry for power.
The Great Game was getting very complicated. The board was full of dangerous players.
But Ta Lo was safe for now. The Shadow Pact was holding. Jin and Suyin were sleeping peacefully in their beds. The Earthbenders were building their walls. The Firebenders were lighting the dark.
The Guardian Dragon slowly closed his giant, ancient eyes. The heavy, warm water wrapped around him like a thick blanket. He let his mind drift away from the golden System.
He went back to his deep, long slumber. He would sleep, and he would let his people grow strong. When the outside world finally came knocking on the door of the hidden mountain, the children of the Dragon would be ready to answer.