Titan King: Ascension of the Giant Chapter 1707 Whispers of Godhood

The Titanion Realm. Stoneheart City.

Since Blackstone City vanished from the waking world, Stoneheart City had become the Stoneheart Horde's seat of politics, trade, and coin entire—the one city without rival on the whole continent. Cradle of civilization, sink of wealth, the hub where every race of the Horde came to mingle. It drew outsiders without number.

A fresh arrival himself, Mondusath found everything before him new and strange and worth a second look. The walls reared high and ran the length of the land; the gates stood broad and orderly, merchants and camel-trains coming and going in an unbroken stream. He stepped through the dark of the gate-tunnel, and the blaze of the sun came down and lit the whole city to a shine—hawkers' cries and the whinny of mounts braiding together—and the gloom in him broke open into something brighter.

Now there's a thriving sprawl—wares past counting, music every night of the week. A demigod's faintest reach took the whole bustle and din of the city, and not a thread of it slipped past Mondusath's notice.

"You've come."

A human-shaped phantom appeared at his side, drawing not a glance from anyone around—as though no one could see him at all.

"I know your scent. You're one of the ones who stole the dragon's egg." Mondusath fixed on this phantom will of Orion's and bore down with his stare, trying to see through him. "You seem a good deal stronger."

Mondusath's full probe turned up the edge of something—a threat, though no ill will under it.

"Welcome to the Titanion Realm. This is the Stoneheart Horde, the domain of the Stoneheart titans." Orion smiled, untroubled by the prying. The man he was now had no need to hide a thing. "Walk with me?"

It wasn't a question. It was an invitation.

Orion took the lead, a step ahead of Mondusath, Great Dragon King of Light. It had been a long while since he'd wandered Stoneheart City himself; its buildings and its crowds were at once familiar and strange.

"Glad to." Mondusath looked at Orion's back, narrowed his eyes a beat, then loosed an intrigued laugh.

Ever since he'd gotten the coordinates for the Titanion Realm off a demigod named Edward, Mondusath had turned it over and over, hesitated a long while, and made no small preparation before deciding on this descent. He hadn't expected it all to be real. The fact of it staggered him.

"How did you manage it?" The sun was mild, the flagstones dry and clean. Orion and Mondusath walked a street strung with awnings, pulled by the food and trinkets laid out beneath them. Mondusath dropped a mana core at a roadside stall, took a fistful of meat skewers off the vendor, and brimmed with curiosity about the Titanion Realm. In this day and age, raising a world to an Ascendant Plane was unthinkable—a thing you might stumble on but never chase down.

"Countless conspiracies colliding with one accident." Orion put the bones of it in a handful of words.

Mondusath blinked at that. A thousand scenes of war flashed through his head, a thousand schemes and snares aimed at the Stoneheart Horde and the Titanion Realm.

"So—have you confirmed it?" Orion turned, his smile easy.

"Confirmed what?"

"That we're some of the thieves who lifted the dragon's egg back then? Or that we've already refined the World Dragon and spent it?"

"…"

A thousand thoughts churned in Mondusath. He could even feel, on the far side of the continent, the scent of a great dragon he knew well. A World Dragon.

"You're confident. Aren't you afraid I'll come back at you? Afraid I'll leak what's here and draw more enemies down on you? A newborn Ascendant Plane—you understand that's a fat slab of meat in the eyes of any demigod." Mondusath walked at Orion's back, taking in the street as he went, working at the skewers in his hand. He was only an avatar descended; offending Orion cost him nothing.

"If you were a touch stronger, your senses a shade finer, you wouldn't say a thing like that." Orion didn't even turn. He walked on.

Mondusath stopped. He thought a moment, then reached out and read Stoneheart City again, fine and careful. This time, obstruction at every turn—wards rose invisible over building after building, blanking his sense. What shook him was the demigod wills flickering through the city, here and gone, sliding clear of his reach.

Oho. That feel—dragonkind's gift, looks like. Another worm who doesn't know how high the sky sits. Off—off—off with you. Crude thing, who prys on people as he pleases? Strange scent. Must be the new arrival…

Several auras rose in the city, each a match for Mondusath and then some, and batted his sense back—and the curses that came with them didn't spare him an ounce of face.

"Abyss powers? Hell powers? Have you lost your minds?" Mondusath was no green minnow fresh to the waters. He'd caught the scent of the strong out of the Abyss and Hell, thick with ill will.

"The word my partner passed you is running a little behind." Orion walked through the crowd, no mind to spare for the powers descending on Stoneheart City from every quarter. So long as they kept to the rules and order the Stoneheart Horde had laid down, they could do as they pleased. "The Titanion Realm is joined to another Ascendant Plane now, and the two have opened a war of the planes. Hard word has it the enemy side holds twelve apex powers asleep, each with a Divine Mantle."

Orion stopped before a tavern door and looked back to hand Mondusath a piece of news that knocked his stride out from under him.

"A Divine Mantle? Twelve?" Impossible. The thing didn't bear a second's thought—it had to be a false rumor.

"Come. Let me buy you a drink." Orion had no interest in proving the word true or false. Without quite marking it, they'd come to the Silent Goblet—Delilah's ground—and he had a mind to go in for one. He stepped through the door before Mondusath could get out a word.

"Hah. My ace is the Deckmaster. Deckmaster hits the table, the gods give way, and every card of mine already in the discard comes roaring back to life. Now the real war starts."

Barely through the door, Orion caught sight of a short-legged dwarf up on a chair, hollering. Drink had gone to him—eyes red, a reek of ale hanging off him—and under the despairing stares of his three card-mates, he flipped his hole card with all the swagger in the world.

"Deal's a deal. This round's on you lot."

"…"

Orion gave it a glance, drew his eyes away, and kept on toward the upper floors. Mondusath came in quick on his heels, eyes full of questions, dogging Orion to get it straight.

All the way up to the fifth floor, where only a scattered few sat—everyone who reached it was a demigod, and unless they had a particular wish to be known to one another, they each kept the rest screened out.