The Consequences of Meeting a Dragon

When Thenio woke up, he could hear the soft sound of a knife scraping against wood, and there was the familiar smell of shavings in the room. He turned his head, expecting to see Eteon carving something. Instead, he saw Brel, sitting at the table in one of his Forest Person-sized wicker chairs. Humerus' new octopus puppet was resting on the table in front of him. It had a full set of legs attached to it now, and it looked like Brel was finishing the details of the face.

Thenio watched him for a minute or two. Then Brel seemed to notice his gaze and looked up.

"Oh, good morning," he said, setting down his knife and giving Thenio a warm smile. "How are you feeling?"

"Better, I think." Thenio tried to push himself up into a sitting position and discovered that enough strength had returned to his limbs that he was able to manage it without help. "It feels like the magic suppression is a lot lower?"

"Yes, it's down to about sixty percent. Do you feel like getting up?"

"I guess so." Thenio pushed the bedclothes back and tentatively swung his legs down over the side of the bed. He still felt rather sluggish, but his body seemed to mostly be moving normally again.

"Good." Brel got up and went over to the wardrobe. "I'll help you wash up and change clothes. Then we can find you something to eat." He opened the wardrobe door and started rummaging around inside.

"Where's everyone else?"

"Ariom and Iggy are in the kitchen. Bero and Humerus went home for the night. Then they had some kind of appointment this morning, but Bero said they'd be back here before noon." Brel closed the wardrobe and came over to the bed, carrying a stack of folded clothes that Thenio recognized as his. "And Eteon had to leave for a while to go take care of something, but he should be back soon, too."

"What kinds of things do mythic agents normally do? I know Eteon has been watching me, but does he have some kind of job besides that? He used to tell me that he couldn't come to the park some days because he had other things to do, but he never said what they were."

"We do whatever our contractor asks us to do, basically. There are all kinds of different assignments. Everything from helping to manage our contractor's territory, to doing research on different topics, to acting as government liaisons. My official assignment is to manage the Halls of Knowledge and Training, where the Servants study and train outsiders, though Ket'shiu also asks me to do other things from time to time."

"Servants?"

"The Shiu'tanas. The name means 'lord's servants.' They're people who have committed to serving Ket'shiu. A little like agents, but without the contract."

Thenio didn't know that much about the Shiu'tanas. But he was aware that they were a group of Forest People who were some of the best healers and alchemists on the continent. They ran a training school in Ket'qe, where they taught both Forest People and humans. A lot of the best doctors and pharmaceutical alchemists had been there to study, including Grandmaster Sephior. Probably his wife, too, since Bero had said she was a top-tier alchemist. Maybe that was where they'd met each other.

Wait...if Brel was in charge of the Shiu'tana training school, didn't that mean he was a pretty important person, even for a mythic agent? Was it really okay for somebody like that to be here making octopus puppets...?

"The whole idea behind being an agent is that you help out your contractor in exchange for being given some of their power," Brel went on. "It's sort of like the relationship between wizards and familiars. Most familiars help with their contract partner's work, don't they?"

"Then do mythic beasts have jobs, too, if they have work they need help with?" Thenio paused. "Oh...maybe I'm not supposed to ask about that...?"

Brel tilted his head, apparently considering. "I probably shouldn't tell you too many details. But I think a general answer is all right. Yes, mythic beasts have jobs. They keep the world running, basically."

"Keep the world running?" Thenio stared at him. "What does that mean?"

"Well, it means a lot of things. Such as maintaining the balance of elements. Higher-level magic users can create physical elements, right? Water magic users create water, for example."

"Right...?"

"So, there are water magic users creating water all over the world. Some of it they get rid of themselves, but a lot of it just evaporates. Then it comes down as rain somewhere. But if that keeps happening, the amount of water in the world will just keep increasing, won't it? So eventually the entire continent would be flooded."

"Oh." Thenio blinked. "I guess it would. I'd never really thought about that before...."

"That's because you've never needed to think about it. Because Naslunal takes care of it. Most of that water eventually ends up in the ocean, and one of his jobs as a mythic beast is to monitor the sea level and convert some of the water back into magic power when there gets to be too much. There are a lot of things like that which need to be done on a regular basis. The mythics divide up the work between them, based on their abilities. Ones with water-focused domains take care of the water. Earth-oriented ones take care of the soil and minerals. And so on."

"Wow.... I've always heard that mythic beasts don't care much about less powerful species. I had no idea that they were constantly helping us out like that."

"Well, it's not completely altruistic. They want to have a nice world to live in, too."

"Yeah, but still...." Thenio was silent for a moment, thinking over what Brel had just said. "So Ki'shiu should also have a job like that, right? Then isn't it a problem for him and Eteon to be spending so much time helping me? I mean...it's pretty incredible that a mythic beast would even bother giving me magic lessons. But then he's also been taking me flying to all sorts of places. I really like it, and I'm grateful to him, but...well...doesn't he have more important things to do?"

Come to think of it...Ki'shiu hadn't appeared in his dreams last night. Maybe that had something to do with the thing Eteon needed to take care of?

But Brel actually laughed at the question, much like Ki'shiu had done when Thenio expressed his doubt that a mythic beast would ever take an interest in him. "Don't worry about that. Ki'shiu enjoys spending time with you. He's been in a better mood the past couple of weeks than I've seen him in ages. And he's still doing his job properly. It's not like mythics spend all their time working, you know? They can do whatever they like in their free time. And Ki'shiu has a little more time in the first place because he doesn't need to sleep."

"Wait, he doesn't sleep? A dream beast doesn't sleep?"

"It's because he's a dream beast. He has direct access to the dream world. So rather than saying he doesn't sleep, it's probably more accurate to say that he's always sleeping. He's sort of perpetually asleep and awake at the same time."

"Oh...is that how it works...?"

Thenio puzzled over that idea while Brel helped him over to the adjoining bathroom. He could walk by himself but was still a little unsteady. At first he was doubtful that the Forest Man would be able to provide much support, since he was more than a foot shorter than Thenio was. But Brel turned out to be surprisingly strong. At one point, when Thenio stumbled, Brel caught and held him up just with his long tail. He seemed to be able to use it almost like a third arm.

Having Brel help him was also surprisingly comfortable, considering that he was still practically a stranger. Maybe it was because Brel and Eteon seemed to be close friends. Or maybe it had something to do with him being a mythic agent. But Thenio felt an odd sense of familiarity when he interacted with the Forest Man, almost like Brel was his older brother or cousin.

Not that he would have felt comfortable having any of his actual cousins help him change clothes....

After Thenio was dressed and had taken a short rest, he walked slowly out to the kitchen, with Brel still following closely beside him in case he needed a steadying hand or tail.

As they crossed the sitting room, Thenio thought he could smell something burning. The scent grew stronger the closer they got to the kitchen. Maybe someone had been a bit careless while they were cooking breakfast?

They entered the kitchen and found Ariom sitting at the small dining table, sorting through a stack of papers and writing something on a large notepad—the kind that he often used for drafting enchantment matrices. There were other piles of paper covering most of the table's surface. Iggy was sitting off to one side, watching Ariom work.

"Thenio's awake!" As soon as he spotted them, the little dragon jumped off the table and flew toward them.

Thenio couldn't raise his arm quite fast enough, but a furry tail whipped through the air in front of him, catching Iggy in mid-glide and saving Thenio from getting a faceful of excited dragon.

"I'm glad you're happy to see Thenio," Brel told Iggy, who was looking around in confusion, obviously trying to figure out why his flight had come to such an abrupt halt. "But be a little careful with him today, all right? He's not completely recovered yet."

"Oh." Iggy stared at Brel for a moment, then looked at Thenio. "Okay." He turned back to Brel. "Wow, tree-cat! Your tail is super amazing! Thenio, look! The tree-cat catched me in the air with his tail!"

The dragon's own tail had started waving furiously.

"Yeah, he did." Thenio reached up and lifted Iggy out of the brown and white fur. "His tail is really strong, isn't it?"

"Mmm!" Iggy agreed happily. "If I practice hard, maybe I can catch things with my tail, too!"

"Uh...yeah. Maybe you can." Thenio decided not to disillusion the little guy by trying to explain the concept of prehensile tails right then. He wasn't sure how well he could explain it anyway....

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Better to let someone like Seyli or Bero handle tail anatomy discussions.

When Iggy had taken flight, the breeze from his wings made several pieces of paper fly off their piles, and Ariom had been straightening them with a slightly exasperated look on his face. He set the last one back in place and then turned to Thenio. "Looks like you're feeling better."

"Yeah. I'm still kind of tired from the magic suppression and a little stiff from sleeping most of yesterday. But otherwise I feel okay."

"Good." Ariom glanced back at his paper piles, his expression turning a little awkward. "Sorry about all this. You'd probably like a spot to eat breakfast. Give me a minute, I'll try to make room...."

"Ah, don't worry about it," Brel said with a reassuring smile. He pointed at the counter which cut partway across the room, dividing the dining area from the kitchen. "He can eat over here. I'll make a taller chair for him."

The Forest Man gestured at the floor next to the counter, and a cluster of branches sprouted up out of it, weaving themselves into a human-sized chair that was a bit taller than normal, to match the height of the counter.

Thenio watched, fascinated. He'd seen several wicker chairs in the bedroom and knew that Brel had made them, but this was his first time actually seeing it happen. It was quite impressive—especially the fact that the floor somehow wasn't damaged in the process.

"There you go. Have a seat. I'll get your breakfast."

"Thank you." Thenio took a step toward the chair and then paused. "Wait...is it okay for you to do things like this right in front of me? My magic still feels fine, but...."

"Oh, I guess you wouldn't know yet, would you? Sorry, I forgot." Brel gave him an apologetic smile. "You won't absorb magic from mythic beasts, so it's perfectly safe as long as I use Ket'shiu's power. I have to be more careful with my regular magic, of course...but even that's relatively safe, since Forest People don't use elemental magic."

"Really?" Thenio blinked a few times. Then he looked at Ariom. "I didn't absorb any of his magic just now?"

Ariom looked uncomfortable. "Uh...I don't actually know. I'm not supposed to use magesight for a few days. I overdid it a little when we were analyzing that flesh puppet and later during the raid, so I need to rest my eyes for a while.... But it makes sense. I mean, you were there when he got after me for trying to manipulate Ket'shiu's power with my void magic, right? And we already knew that chaos morphs don't have a problem with the ambient magic in Ket'qe. That must be because it comes from Ket'shiu."

"That's right," Brel said, nodding. "Well...some of it is from the other mythic beasts who live there. But it's mostly Ket'shiu's. So the chaos morph who lived in Ket'qe didn't absorb it. He had to stay away from areas where lots of Forest People or magic beasts lived, though, since their magic could still cause him problems. Fortunately the unicorns were all right, since they use life magic. It would have been a real challenge keeping them away from him."

"Oh?" Ariom raised an eyebrow. "So unicorns like chaos magic, huh?"

Brel laughed. "They love it. They followed him around like ducklings."

"Oh," Ariom said again, though with a rather different tone than before. He fixed Thenio with a disgruntled stare. "I guess I should have known it would be like that...."

Thenio gave him an apologetic look in response, even though he wasn't entirely sure what he ought to be apologetic for. It wasn't his fault that unicorns liked chaos magic and not void magic....

As an excuse to avoid Ariom's gaze, he turned and sat down in the chair that Brel had made, still holding Iggy in his arms. Brel had started moving around the room, getting out dishes and food, and boy and dragon both watched him with great interest. Since the kitchen was designed for humans, quite a few things were physically out of his reach. But that didn't stop him—he simply used magic to float things off the higher shelves and bring them down to him.

If Humerus were to cook a meal, it would probably look something like this....

Thenio felt a little strange seeing someone use magic so freely. Even though he'd been surrounded by high-level wizards the past few months, they'd all been avoiding using magic around him. The most magic he'd seen lately was probably from Ki'shiu, and even he had mentioned having to be careful not to use too much.

That thought made Thenio frown. "Hey, if I can't absorb power from mythic beasts, then what about Ki'shiu's magic? He's mentioned a few times that it would be a problem if I get exposed to too much of it at once."

Brel was just about to crack an egg into a frying pan, but he paused and turned around. "Ah...right. Ki'shiu's power is a bit dangerous for you. But that's his magic specifically, not mythic beast magic in general."

"Why? What's different about his magic?"

"Sorry, I can't really explain that. Just...he warned you that knowledge can be dangerous, right? Since you can use dream magic yourself?"

"Yeah...?"

"And dream magic is the magic of knowledge. So let's just say that too much of his magic...might give you too much knowledge. Too much dangerous knowledge. I probably shouldn't say any more than that." Brel gave Thenio an apologetic smile and then turned back to the frying pan.

Thenio glanced over at Ariom. He was staring at Brel with a scowl on his face. Thenio wasn't sure if it meant he didn't like what the Forest Man had said or if he was just thinking hard about it. Or maybe some of both.

Ariom noticed Thenio's gaze and shrugged. "I have an idea of what he's getting at. It fits with some of the things that Ki'shiu warned Mideis about. And it's annoying...but he's probably right. We shouldn't talk about it any more for the time being."

Thenio made a face but didn't argue. Being denied information like this was frustrating, but he was getting sort of used to it by now....

Wanting to think about something else, he focused on the papers that were spread across the table. The burnt smell that he'd noticed earlier was actually coming from the dining area, and looking more closely, he saw that many of Ariom's papers had scorch marks on them. They seemed to be sorted into piles based on how damaged they were. Some sheets were completely intact, and some had charred edges but were still perfectly legible. Others had large chunks missing, and there was one pile that was just blackened scraps with pencil lines only faintly visible here and there.

Thenio frowned, staring at one of the papers closest to him. The image drawn on it was clearly a magic formation, with runes written in his own handwriting. "Are those the enchantment transcriptions from that flesh golem? What happened to them?"

"The Order of the Ravener attacked the Royal Guard headquarters in several places at the same time you and Focilo were abducted. Mideis and an assistant were making copies of your transcriptions in the records room when they were attacked by a Guard staff member who was actually working for the Order. She set off a fire bomb—probably trying to destroy the information we'd gotten. The assistant saved as many of the papers as he could while Mideis fought her off, and with the extra copies they'd already made, the loss wasn't as bad as it might have been, but...well. It's like you see." Ariom nodded at the table with a sigh. "I just started going through them, so I can't be sure yet, but I'm guessing we lost at least a quarter of the information. Possibly a third or more."

Thenio grimaced. "So that's why Mideis and Amisi had to go to the hospital? Have you heard from them? Are they okay?"

"I've been in touch with Mideis. He said they were both burned pretty badly, but the damage was mostly physical, so the doctors were able to heal them up without too many lingering effects. They're resting at home for now. But Mideis said he'd come over in a couple of days and help me reconstruct some of this mess."

"Do you think you can remember the missing parts?"

Ariom shrugged. "Maybe some of them, though when I was analyzing that golem, I was focused on avoiding traps, not on remembering the details of the magic formations. But I should be able to fill in some parts just based on what's around them. Enchantment reconstruction is one of my specialties, remember? Uncle Bero and Focilo both said they'd help out, too. They were sorting through these transcriptions while you were drawing them, so they might remember a few details that Mideis and I don't. So between the four of us...well, I'm sure we won't be able to reconstruct everything. But we'll do what we can."

Thenio stared at one of the piles of charred fragments. "It seems really unfair. We spent so much time on those, and then they just got burned up like that...."

"Well...yeah...." Ariom let out a long sigh. "I keep reminding myself that I should be glad that Mideis and Amisi are all right...and that we still have as much of this information as we do.... But it's still a pretty painful loss, after all the effort everyone put in."

The room was silent for a minute, apart from the sizzling sounds from the egg and sausages that Brel was cooking in the background.

"Maybe...I could get some of it back?" Thenio said tentatively. "I mean, I did draw all those transcriptions in the first place. And dream magic helps me remember things I've seen before, right? So maybe I could use it to redraw the missing formations."

"That...did occur to me." Ariom frowned down at the stack of papers in front of him. "It might work. And I'll be grateful if you want to give it a try. Just...let's check with Eteon first. I don't think it will be dangerous, since you used your magic to draw all these in the first place. But there's still so much we don't understand about how dream magic works. And...I don't know.... After everything that happened, I guess I'm feeling a little paranoid about anything connected to the Order of the Ravener." He sighed again and looked over at Brel. "Is Eteon still in Ket'qe?"

Brel paused his cooking for a moment, his furry ears twitching. "Yes. He'll probably be there for another hour or so."

"In Ket'qe?" Thenio's eyes widened in surprise. "How did he get there?"

"He can teleport, apparently," Ariom said, rolling his eyes. "Because of course he can. Why wouldn't he...?"

Brel chuckled. "I understand how you feel. Even other mythics find dream magic a little hard to comprehend sometimes.... It's not technically teleportation, though. That's spatial magic. Eteon actually travels by going through the dream world. Once he's in there, he can choose where he wants to exit. So he just pops in and out, and he's at his destination."

"Wow...really? Like how Ki'shiu can go from one dream to another?" Thenio asked, staring at him in disbelief.

"Right. Just like that. So keep working hard on your dream magic, all right?" Brel gave him a playful wink. "Maybe you'll be able to do the same thing if you practice for a few more centuries."

"Uh...right. I'll keep at it..." Thenio said with a weak laugh.

He glanced down at the dragon in his arms. Iggy probably had a better chance of learning to catch things in the air with his tail than Thenio had of learning to travel around the world using dreams....

While he was trying to wrap his still-tired mind around the idea of Eteon being able to instantly move halfway across the continent, Iggy suddenly perked his ears up and turned his head toward the sitting room. "Oh, I hear someone coming in."

Thenio also listened and heard the sound of footsteps and a door closing. A moment later, Bero appeared in the kitchen doorway with a bronze-skinned Humerus riding on his shoulder. Grandmaster Sephior was following behind them.

"Good morning, everyone. Thenio, it's nice to see you up. How are you feeling?" Bero smiled as he spoke, but it looked a little forced, like he was upset about something but was trying not to show it.

"Still tired from the magic suppression, but otherwise not bad."

"Your magic circuit seems to be recovering well," Grandmaster Sephior said, looking Thenio over. "You'll probably be able to go home later today. I came to do your morning check-up, but it looks like you're about to have breakfast, so I guess we'll wait a little. That's fine. There's something we need to talk about, anyway." He looked at Brel, who was setting a plate with two berry pastries on it on the counter in front of Thenio. "I guess Eteon's not back yet?"

"Not yet. But go ahead with your talk. I can pass the information on to him."

"All right." Grandmaster Sephior nodded. Then he went over to a chair across from Ariom, though he paused for a moment before he sat down, looking over the paper piles. "That woman really made a mess of these transcriptions, didn't she? Those Order members are quite a piece of work...."

"Tell me about it," Ariom said, scowling. "But what's this about needing to talk? Did something happen?"

"Well, not yet. It's more something that's about to happen." Grandmaster Sephior stared down at the table for a moment, a deep frown creasing his already-wrinkled face. "This will take some explaining...it's hard to know where to begin.... I guess we'll start with the conclusion. The Stability Center is going to announce that we've made a breakthrough in our research on chaos morphs."

Ariom's eyebrows shot up. "What are you talking about? What breakthrough?"

"The announcement will go something like this: We've discovered that 'chaos affinity' isn't, in fact, a true affinity. The children known as 'chaos morphs' are actually a very rare type of chimeras." Grandmaster Sephior let out a small sigh. "Chaos magic...doesn't exist."