Haku was listening to everything Akenothustar was saying without saying a word; his mind was completely enraptured by that speech and for once in his life he was thinking of nothing else but accumulating the information he was receiving inside his brain. Akenothustar had spoken of things he couldn't understand, and which he surely would try to understand in the days and weeks and months and years to come; but those high-sounding words had been enough to make him realize something very important, which is that the ancient civilization of dragons was far more advanced than he could ever imagine, and that they knew far more strange and wonderful things than those known to the newcomers of the modern era. And he was only wise enough to have foreseen the catastrophe of the second sun… but they hadn't stopped it. Or rather, they had chosen not to stop her.
"I could explain to you what it was that triggered the disaster, but it would take too long. I would have to explain to you the life and death cycle of stars, use unfamiliar terms to define distances, explain in detail how nuclear fusion occurs, and so on. It would be very long indeed, so I will leave this explanation for another moment. What matters for the purposes of the story I am telling you is that what was to come could not go unnoticed in the eyes of an advanced civilization like ours: the dragons knew it thousands of years in advance" Akenothustar went on to say, letting out angry huffs, which reverberated through the cave with the sound of the waves of an entire ocean. "Yet they chose to do nothing. A few wiser dragons feared what was to come, but most of them, puffed up in their position as absolute rulers of this world, were convinced that their powers would be enough to protect them from the disaster that was coming, and that there was therefore no reason to do anything. They were deluded. When the evil light appeared in the sky, the mana temporarily vanished from this world... well, it didn't vanish actually, the processes behind what is success are more complicated, but again it would take too long to explain, so be content to know that the dragons lost all their powers. And with no powers, no mana, there was nothing that could save them. Our cities built in the sky, with no more the magic that kept them in the air, they fell to the earth in crumbs; the high towers we had erected, no longer supported by their spells, collapsed in on themselves and turned to dust. These events alone killed most of the dragons, but most part of our species was saved, since even if we had built large buildings, many of us still preferred living in an almost natural state, even if much more civilized than what you know, and therefore were far away at the time when our cities were swept away; but still this didn't save them, since without the mana, their own bodies collapsed killing them one by one. The few who miraculously managed to survive were swept away in the following decades, exterminated by hunger, cold, despair and even by the very rays of the sun which had become deadly due to the evil light. The dragons, who had been convinced they could survive, were wiped out, with no one to blame but their own pride. They could have at least tried to save themselves, but they hadn't. Their arrogance was the cause of their downfall"
Akenothustar looked at the image in the palm of his hand; the lush green world full of wonders he had shown turned into a dark, gloomy, dead place, where there was nothing but withered trees and huge skeletons of dragons. He let out a broken sigh as he watched that scene, and closed his eyes for a moment as if he was trying not to cry. Then he opened them again, but this time they were more determined. "I was a young dragon when this occurred; I was younger than you at this time. My mother was Balagaberan, the great dragon who now sustains the cave where the arachnes have sited their city. She was one of the few dragons who feared that our powers would not be enough to counter what was to come; she had repeatedly spoken in front of the other dragons, but she had always been laughed at. In the end, she had decided to fend for herself. When the catastrophe befell us, she took me and my brothers and sisters, and she also took with her other young dragons like us; as our buildings collapsed and the evil light in the sky scorched everything around us, my mother led us into the land that hundreds thousands of years later it would become the Yuthia Desert. There she used her powers to carve miles of a passageway large enough for her to pass through, and took us underground enough that we could not be affected by what was happening on the surface; here he created a cavity, which is the cave you are in now, and supported it with his body. While doing so, he ordered us to go into hibernation and stay in that state for as long as possible. We obeyed; she, however, remained awake. The mana here fed her, albeit much more slowly than real food, and she was able to keep herself alive. Other dragons like her sought refuge underground, or in the underground buildings we had built (what you call dungeons), but none of them were as lucky as she was, and one by one the elder dragons all died. Only young dragons like us survived all over the world, because we were the ones that needed the least energy and therefore the least food, and alternating long periods of hibernation with short periods in which they woke up and went to find food underground, all over the world young dragons managed to survive long enough, and our species therefore managed to save itself from extinction, unlike almost all life on this world which was instead wiped out by the evil light"
The image on Akenothustar's palm changed again; this time he showed a gigantic dragon who was supporting a cave with her enormous body, an act which clearly caused her a lot of pain and which was requiring immense effort; below her were at least a hundred small dragons sleeping peacefully. Haku felt a strange sense of jealousy seeing that scene: how great must have been the love of that dragon for her children, to the point of using her own body to protect them? For him who hadn't had parents worthy of the name, that scene seemed almost alien. "Around the rest of the world, other young dragons like us survived on dungeons where food was stored, or burrows dug by other species that allowed them to roam and hunt other animals...mostly the creatures that would one day be become the newcomers. But we weren't so lucky: the place where we were was deep enough to protect us, but it had no food. Even though our mother could survive on the mana that was down here, at least for a while, we didn't we could have done that once we awoke from hibernation.But Balagaberan was aware of this, and so he began to build a dungeon—not a dungeon composed of stones, blocks, and architectural techniques, but a dungeon composed and created by life itself. Using her powers, my mother sucked up all the water that was on the surface, every tiniest drop, creating the parched conditions that would later give rise to the Yuthia Desert, and carried this water down here, making it dig new tunnels and new passages through a complex natural hydraulic system. My mother then laid the foundations for a water system that would occupy the subsoil of the entire desert. Having water and a lot of mana available, Balagaberan then started the second important step: making the air breathable and creating the perfect conditions for life to thrive. Using a mana vein that opened not far from here as her main source of energy, and some tiny fish, mice, reptiles, and other animals she'd brought with her, Balagaberan fashioned a whole new ecosystem the way she wanted it. At first he created giant mushrooms which, using the force of water as an energy source and mana as support, could grow in the form of columns, lifting the ceiling and creating entire caves of gigantic dimensions; then he created bioluminescent mushrooms, capable of emitting light and heat and through a complex chemical system of breaking the foundations of the same water, creating the essential gases for breathing. With these conditions fulfilled, he then created numerous animal species perfectly adapted to this habitat. And so it was that the intricate system of caves you now find yourself in was created: the greatest work of natural engineering, a perfect system where life and the ecosystem are interconnected, maintaining stable conditions and continuously changing, resisting consequence to any natural disaster and spreading throughout the desert; in doing so, Balagaberan had created an immense food supply for all the young dragons he had rescued, which could then easily feed themselves in the few moments they emerged from hibernation"
Haku's eyes and mouth widened when he heard those words. So all that complex cave system, that water flowing everywhere, those column-like mushrooms, the bioluminescent mushrooms, the air they were breathing, the animals, everything… it was all the work of that huge dragon of now only the skeleton remained. It was amazing what a 10,000 years old dragon could do; this was literally beyond any known limit! Not just create something huge, but whole life forms! Basically, Balagaberan alone had created an entire different world, with its own laws and rules and completely separate from what there was on the surface!
"Thanks to my mother's work, we would all be able to hold on until the catastrophe was over. Our world would have been hostile to life for hundreds of thousands of years, but we could survive beneath the surface, protected by kilometers of solid rock and with entire ecosystems that could provide us with food.You must know that we dragons, when we activate our hibernation, stop the aging process, just like everything in our body momentarily stops working, we also stop growing Consequently, by remaining in hibernation for several thousand years and only waking up for very short periods to eat, we could go on living until the catastrophe was over, even if it would take much longer than 10,000 years, which as you now know are the limit of the life of our species. And not only us" and in Akenothustar's hand appeared strange humanoid beings similar to a cross between monkeys and moles. "Attracted by the prosperity, other intelligent creatures, those who would become the newcomers in the future, also began to come here. Some populations of these creatures congregated in these caves, and here they were welcomed by Balagaberan. My mother knew that as we went constantly in hibernation the newcomers were a danger to us, but he also knew he could not stop their constant arrival; so he allowed them to settle in his dungeon and enjoy its riches, on the condition that they never enter this specific cave and ever attacked his children, and the newcomers did as they were told.In time, this cave system became the most thriving place for life to take refuge during the catastrophe, and whole generations of primitive newcomers took refuge here with us dragons. In the brief periods in which we ceased to be in hibernation we met and exchanged knowledge and information with them, and soon new friendships emerged between dragons and newcomers. We soon found ourselves regarding them as part of our lives as if they had always been there with us, and longing for their survival. We thought our mother could survive like us: alternating between hibernation and periods of nourishment, she could last long enough. But unfortunately our mother knew she couldn't do it; she was already old, and the mana that was fueling her would soon not be enough. And so, when she had completed her work, she told us that she would let death take her; but first, she told us about a dream. A dream that she had and that she wanted us to carry on"