Galbrecht felt something which seemed to be a hand upon his shoulder. He looked up, but the goddess was still in her seat a few feet away. Why that should surprise him was beyond him, though. This was all too much.

  She had said to stand, so he did. Then he took a couple of steps until he could pull out the empty chair and sit down.

  As he did, she asked, “You can ask me one question, but I also have one thing to tell you. So, do you want to ask or listen first?”

  “I will listen. You are my goddess.”

  “Are you sure? It may be hard to focus after what I have to tell you.”

  Galbrecht looked at the glory, which was Miseria. She was beautiful in a way which surpassed even his beloved Modessa, yet he saw parts of his love in the visage of his goddess. She smiled when he had that thought and suddenly Galbrecht realized that this presentation of his goddess was one created by his own mind. His need to relate and understand her had impressed his perceptions upon Miseria.

  She was letting him know what he needed to do. So he asked his question. A sliver of doubt had entered his soul, and it prompted this question. If he was truthful, he had always struggled with some of the things he had to do for his goddess, but he understood he didn't know the full scope of things, so he had always simply accepted that. Now, though, this seemed so clear.

  “Why can I not accept the quest to help free the dragons? Do you not want them freed?”

  “You need to understand that the relationship between gods and dragons is as old as this world. It is older than your race, older even than the elves. Humans are not party to the Pact, so I am limited in what I can tell you.

  “But I hope that you will believe me when I tell you that the gods were not the engineers of the plight the dragons now find themselves in. This was the result of a few evil humans and then it spread due to the mortal trait of indolence.”

  Galbrecht couldn’t help himself, his next question just came out. “Then why allow it?”

  “I said that we didn’t cause it or even want it, but we do bear some blame. The Pact has had unintended consequences for all parties to it. That is all I can say on that subject. If it were easy to fix, then I would have fixed it already. Using mortal surrogates, especially those who revile you, is taxing… even to a 4th dimensional being.

  “Suffice it to say that because you are my representative, I cannot allow you to accept a system quest like that. There are others who very much want to keep the dragons from interfering—not that they’d welcome the help of the gods, even could we offer it. You may still follow your heart, my servant, but you must do so without my blessing. Know, though, that I am proud of the man you have become—even when I have asked difficult things of you. Now, though, it is time for you to hear something hard.”

  Galbrecht nodded. He felt both gratitude and sorrow from his goddess. That was a first, at least with regard to the sorrow. “Yes, my goddess.”

  “The damage which has been done to Modessa can not be healed. It can be patched but never healed. Not so long as there is balance and balance is better than the risk. So prepare yourself to lose a piece of her. Again, I wish that I could say more, but there are limits which constrain even the gods. Keeping an open mind for the options that are presented is what I would tell you.”

  Galbrecht wanted to ask for more clarification, but the light around him shattered and he found himself back in his body, with Modessa staring up at him.

  Her voice was weak, but it filled him with hope, “Hold me?”

  ____________________________

  Modessa hurt all over. The pain had increased, little by little even, as her friends kept her body alive. Unfortunately, they couldn’t do a thing for what was really tearing her apart.

  She remembered seeing a quest prompt and accepting it. It had been the right thing to do, even though in that moment she’d been certain there was no way she would ever live to see it fulfilled. Soon after that, the pain had grown too intense for her to remain conscious.

  The next thing she had known was a warmth spreading throughout her body. She was being cleansed of the taint, but the cleansing was just as painful as the taint… no… even more painful. She burned, and it felt like her entire body was on fire, being purified in the hottest flame there was, yet it somehow went deeper than just her body

  Finally, when the worst of it was over, she heard Nico’s voice in her ear. But couldn’t make out his words. Her mind wasn’t working well enough yet.

  When Modessa truly came to, she first saw Galbrecht’s beautiful eyes looking down at her. The worry written across his face confirmed just how close to losing her he had been. Yet, inside that gaze, there was an emptiness. Something had broken within her man, and she didn’t even know what it was.

  She cried and shook with her fear as she allowed Galbrecht to hold her close.

  ____________________________

  Tolston awoke. Or was that truly what happened? His last memory was of dying. No, that couldn’t be accurate. Or could it?

  Curses on Serius and the others. They had trapped him where he would be weakest and then struck him down. His hopes for immortality were dashed.

  Then a voice whispered, “No, not gone; just… changed. You still exist. Now you only have to ask yourself this. Will you serve if it gives you a chance at revenge?”

  Tolston had no mouth with which to speak, nor for that matter ears to hear, but he willed his answer back as pure thought. It burst from him before he could fully consider what it meant.

  “Yes, let them burn.”

  “Burning is useful at times, but I believe that cold will serve my purposes better.” The voice began to laugh and Tolston felt fear. He tried to make himself as small as he could, but hiding was no longer an option.

  Chapter 21 - What It Means to Be a Dragon

  I sequestered myself away for a few days after the attack on the university. The changes brought about by my Mind Evolution continued to make me uncomfortable, as did how I now interacted with the Dragon Dream. I saw several flaws in the ways that my dragon ancestors had tackled various situation than ever before.

  I went back and forth in my mind about how much I wanted to adapt, but one undeniable truth kept hitting me: dragonkind had been changed by the pact. I might have disregarded such a realization, but for two things. First, seeing how the system had responded to the dragons in bondage—it had even changed their species—which was proof of how dramatic the changes could be.

  The second thing was my Mind Evolution, itself. Especially right when it happened, I had felt odd. Perhaps the best way to describe it was to explain that I felt squishy inside… warm and soft. So much of my focus had been on how others responded to the situation I was experiencing.

  If dragons, in general, could be changed so much and if I could experience an almost complete reversal of how I thought, even if only temporarily, then how hard was it to believe that a pact created between two races of extra-dimensional beings would affect my race?

  I spent the first day coming to grips with the fact that we dragons had been changed. Once I accepted that fact, the next few days I spent trying to parse out how we had been changed. That brought with it another somewhat uncomfortable realization: I had always been a bit different from other dragons.

  I compared my curiosity with that of my ancestors from the Dragon Dream. They seemed completely content to accept the world as it was. If they didn’t understand something, they smashed it. If they wanted something, they took it. In many ways, it was a refreshingly simple worldview. One which I could well understand, that I felt the appeal of. I could be honest with myself, I had a good slice of that in me, too. But there had been something more than that in me, something that made me rather odd, ever since I was a hatchling.

  There was a need for me to understand why, not just how or what.

  What was important, too. ‘What’ set me apart from most of those I dreamed of? I supposed it was that I was willing to… no, I was eager to learn new things. Or that I could consider—though even I had difficulty accepting it—that dragons might have some shortcomings. Albeit not very many, of course, but perhaps there were a few. Now that view was further cemented.

  Something about the Pact had changed how we interacted with the world. If I understood what it was correctly, the Pact had resulted in the gods and eldritch horrors being blocked, or at least limited, in how they could interact with Taliea and presumably the rest of the world.

  We dragons were connected to the physical world. The magic of this realm flowed through our blood, but there had been a cost. I was still figuring out the exact impact, but it was becoming clear to me that dragons had become complacent. We had become disconnected from the other beings we were to rule over.

  Certainly, dragons were the greatest beings in this world. Nothing about my evolution had caused me to question that. What I did wonder about, though, was the connection between ruling and protecting.

  If this was our world, if dragons were meant to rule this world, then we had to protect it from those who would take it from us. What that meant, I wasn’t prepared to decide—not yet. For now, I pushed the issue aside. I wanted to get some air. I wanted to stretch my legs.

  With that thought, I stood and left my room. When I sent a message to Cami that I was going for a walk in the city, I felt relief flood through our connection. She’d been worried about me, had worried about how I had holed up in my room. If I hadn’t been so lost in introspection, I might have laughed at that idea.

  Cami was a good companion, but she still had much to learn about dragons. It wouldn’t have been unusual at all for me to sleep away three years or even three decades as I grew older—three days was less than nothing. Such a short bit of time mattered only to humans, with their dreadfully short lives.

  There it was again. I would have called human lives pathetically short, before. But now, instead of disdain, I felt only pity for them.

  “Did you want me to come with you?” she asked telepathically.

  “No, I am fine. How is…” I let my thoughts drift away. The question had come to my mind unbidden, but I had to force myself to finish asking it. “How is…”

  “How is Modessa? Was that what you were going to ask?” The surprise was clear in her mental tone.

  “Uh… maybe… probably not… Whatever, it doesn’t matter. You brought it up, though, so you must want to talk about it.” I wasn’t angry with Cami, even if I sounded that way. I hoped she understood that.

  “Whatever you have to tell yourself, Nico. Caring doesn’t automatically make you weak.” She let that thought hang between us for a moment, but before I could respond, she continued, “Modessa is doing as well as can be. We sparred today, but something is… missing from her. Lisella and Galbrecht say her soul has been damaged. It’s like the fire that was inside of her is gone.”

  I pondered that for a moment. The touch of an eldritch horror, even in the diluted form that the oni had used, wasn’t meant for this world—and certainly not for mortal beings. I didn’t remember many details, but I knew that my ancestor, Draconis, had deemed the horrors a far greater threat than the gods.

  To borrow a human expression, he had felt like the gods were like an overly active neighbor. A neighbor who tried to intrude on your space when they weren’t wanted. Even one who liked to argue about the lot line and where your property ended and theirs began.

  But the eldritch horrors were a different kind of neighbor. They were the kind who would set your bushes on fire just to watch them burn. And then they expected you to thank them for making your yard look better.

  “I’m sure Lisella and Galbrecht will figure something out. They are quite skilled, for humans.”

  Cami’s fear came through with her thoughts. “I’m not sure… I’ve been trying to study her, hoping that my Soul Forger class might give me some insights. I can see the cracks inside of her… well, I can’t see them, but I can sense them. I just don’t know what to do about them.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. A human probably would have filled the silence with inane chatter, but thankfully—despite the oddities of my evolution—I wasn’t so far gone.

  After a few minutes of silence, she asked me, “Where are you going?”

  “To see someone who might have a unique perspective on dragons. I fear this evolution has altered my path forward and…” I cut myself off again. I didn’t want to express my uncertainties so bluntly, not even to my bonded companion.

  She seemed to take the hint, though, and simply said, “Tell Edgar hello for me, then. I still need to formally meet him.”

  I felt a strange sensation when she sent those words to me. Her telepathic communication conveyed nothing but well wishes for me and some light curiosity, but something about her all but asking for an introduction irked me.

  Cami was mine. She was my bonded rider. She didn’t need to meet anyone.

  No, I shook my head. Cami wasn’t loot. She wasn’t a minion. She was something more than those things. She was my companion, yes… but what did that mean? I growled under my breath and a mother walking in the opposite direction with two small children quickly picked them both up and ducked into the nearest shop, all while staring at me in fear.

  “Well, bye for now, then. Perhaps… perhaps we could have dinner tonight,” I sent.

  “I’d like that. I know you needed some time alone, but I missed you, Nico.”

  I knew what I was supposed to say something similar back to her. It was almost a ritual between humans. The words almost floated through the ether upon our telepathic bond, but I stifled them. I wasn’t that far gone, was I?

  I finished the walk through town to Edgar’s martial academy rather slowly. It took me a good two hours, as I wandered and wove my way through the streets. I needed some time to process that last conversation.

  There were too many things that I was pushing down the road for a later day. At some point, I was going to have to deal with what was happening to me. For now, I could only hope that Edgar might have some insights.

  Even if he couldn’t, learning about the Pact, evolving my mind, and even Modessa’s attempted self-sacrifice was forcing me to reconsider what it meant to be a dragon. This was something I’d have to live with, something I’d have to define.

  Somehow, I knew this went much further than myself. It was going to change the world, not just for me. The time of dragons might be upon the world again, though I doubted the humans were ready for it.

  Chapter 22 - Dances with Dragons

  Edgar’s academy looked like a great number of repairs had been made to it. It still was a bit shabby on the outside, but I had finally realized that this was, in part, to discourage those who weren’t serious about learning. Many of the students were outside performing training exercises disguised as menial labor.

  One was painting a fence, moving his hand up and down in long strokes with a stiff, inflexible wrist as he moved the brush. A woman was sanding part of the floor, using wide, circular strokes. It was all beneath me, but at least I understood the methodology now.

  I headed straight for the entrance. My eyes remained locked on the door, but my senses were heightened. When I’d come here before, a number of the students had wanted to challenge me.

  I half expected the same thing again. It would not go well for them today, though. I wasn’t in the mood to play. To my surprise, none of them even moved towards me.

  They must have known that I was beyond them. It was only appropriate; I supposed. A part of me wanted to reveal myself to them. They at least studied a fighting style based upon dragons.

  I knew that they respected my kind more than so many others amongst the humans did. It just wasn’t clear to me exactly how much they knew about us. Part of me wondered where they had learned what they did know.

  The inside of the building was virtually empty. There was no one here except for Edgar. That would make things easier. Often some of his other instructors or students were inside sparring. But today he was the only one present, simply sitting there meditating.

  I removed my boots at the door as was the custom in the academy, and then walked onto the mats. I sat in front of him, but before I had stilled myself, Edgar smiled.

  He said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Maybe it was my heightened self-awareness, but I didn’t immediately blurt out a response. Instead, I mulled his words over in my head.

  “You heard about the attack on me?” I asked.

  His eyes remained closed. “Yes, but I have been expecting you for a while. There is something about you which draws me to you. I believe you fit here with us more than you do at the university, but no matter how long I meditate on it, I can’t get a clear vision of why your connection to us is so strong.”