Eileossayd sees them first through a glimpse of magic, latent spells layered upon an old entrance left temporarily vacant flaring.
His gaze greeted by sand and rock; crags and passages crushed into form by his own titanic body once, then figures. Small things, trespassers he'd never have expected, but his gaze focuses on one, focuses on the lost experiment that gained a will of its own. There is a vindictive pleasure that runs through him when the experiment knocks at the knees, the hesitant step backward, the way he sees the thought race through its mind to run and hide. Perhaps dying in the desert sands would be more preferable to stepping into the old lair of an old, angered, dragon. They know the price of treading so far, they are the only one who does, with the way the fox toes the line with bravado, the fetchling looking none the wiser.
The connection is clipped short with barely a thought, the twins that keep watch over him, attend to him, look with understanding silence as the dragon's form condenses, writhes and shrinks into a smaller form. An intake of breath that pulls through serpentine teeth, a low rumbling exhale. The taste of latent energy on his tongue as the paragon of lightning feels it burn with a need for use; for freedom, to strike the nuisances that his precious pearl has both become and surrounded itself with. He will shatter the shell until there is nothing remaining, he will show it the cost of foolish defiance and again he will rend it to pieces; he will shatter it and rebuild it again. This time, this time Eileossayd knows exactly how he must proceed.
The archmage may have played him for a fool, but ever her interference did not come without its costs. Her secrets too belong to him. Lightning crackles at his claw tips, shines, writhes within the scales that peek through his noble attire. Eileossayd chants in tone, pulls upon the living, breathing net of magic that thrives in this new and infantile world and feels it bend to his will. Time and space pass by him; a thousand events in an instant as the spell takes root and teleports him to the unprotected entrance of his old home, once the incantation completes. The halls of twisting rock and sand hinder him none, stepping lightly over old disarmed traps, lightly enough to hide the way his heels click upon stone. Then tile. At the door Eileossayd listens to the end of an argument, at peace being made by pearl and swine.
Through the door he slips through the left crack and watches. Waits. Waits until the first of the unsightly turns to him, exclaims. Then to the pearl who turns not out of surprise but fear. As they should. As they must. The dragon savors the flavor of terror from another and waits but a breath, watches from his comfortable distance as the experiment realizes its level of trespass. To enter here uninvited, to root about his belongings with filthy hands, to let another destroy his work.
The dragon in human skin brings up a hand without blinking an eye, a twitch of a smile full of malice. Cold and calculated as thunder rumbles through his entire being, the scent of storms floods the room. Everything dims. The other freezes to the spot and he can see every plan race behind his eyes, every thought that has ever run through the mind of their own and every one that came before them. Small and weak creatures, terrified of that which they know has slain them time and time again. The mans face falls from impassiveness to a displeased frown as his magic lances from his hand; a bolt of energy unhindered by nature; carpet sets aflame and extinguishes in the blink of an eye the force of which it tears through the air is displaced, shattering glass with an explosive sound that would shatter eardrums.
The experiment digs his hands into a pouch frantically and the bolt of energy slams into the wall past the space they once occupied. The smell of infernal magic burns the air, mixes with the scent of storms. A caustic result that Eileossayd pays no mind to as he makes his way to where his precious body has vanished from, the body and all its friends; he drags a heel through the residue, a thickly intricate line of abyssal tar. Something that should have burned away if the user was not so panicked. But there is no where they may run now, nowhere they may hide, that he is ill-content to pursue. Eventually, that body must return home, it will return home by their own hand or his. They will be delivered their retribution. They will be delivered their fate that they run from for vengeance sings in his veins; there are no wrongs he tolerates. Not anymore.
