It had been three days and the hunger from her hydra bloodline had all but vanished. Another spot of good news was that no one had bothered coming down to her hiding spot during that whole time. She thought at least someone would have thought to check the basement. She had been ready to fly up and laying flat against the ceiling while using her stealth techniques to avoid detection. 

She was very bored and decided to see if Decaan had given Cassandra that pendant she asked him to. Oddly enough he still had it on him and when she focused on him, she saw his immediate surroundings. Both he and his uncle, whom looked like he hadn't slept very well for days, were facing forward as a group of holograms appeared infront of them a semi-circle. These holograms were of various high ranking military officers. Looks like the good general's in deep shit and here I am without any popcorn. Oh well, I can still watch the show regardless.

"I read the report and I'm very disappointed. How could you fail so completely, Detar?" someone Maxine didn't recognize asked, "You've always produced such amazing results in the past."

"You planned this operation in the city under my juristiction without even notifying me, Supreme Commander. So how in all of creation could it possibly be any fault of mine that your secret mission failed?" General Detar asked angrily, "Had you at least notified me, Decaan might have been able to convince her to go there willingly, and we could have gotten her to translate for us with the approaching friendlies!" Okay, new developements are always fun, but it's starting to look like General Detar wasn't the main culprit behind the change of route earlier. But, he isn't against me being caged either. So, my raven harrassment plan remains in place.

"Irrelevant," the 'supreme commander' said, "She is too valueable as a research specimen. Not to mention the damage she has already caused due to your lax measures. She needed to be contained."

"Your statement proves just how little you actually read my report," General Detar growled, "If you had, you would've realized she's done nothing, but help bus. And you wouldn't have taken the risk of angering a highly intelligent being that can literately transform into a monster capable of crushing one of our cities by herself!"

"Calm down, Detar," the supreme commander said.

"Calm down? You want me to fucking calm down?!" General Detar roared, "You effectively betrayed her trust mere minutes after she healed over a dozen children that would've died horribly otherwise and pointed us in the right direction to create our own hybrids. We'll be lucky if she doesn't join the invaders in attacking us!" Huh? He made no mention of the cultivation technique that I gave to Decaan. Did Decaan withhold it? That was a smart move considering what I've seen thus far.

"You're missing the point," the supreme commander said calmly.

"What fucking point?" General Detar asked angrily.

"That creature told Clark Grisweld that there was a means for our draconic warriors to reproduce and he told several others about this as well. Now we will have to dedicate research into that very topic to keep our draconic warriors happy. Many of them have family members that will be on almost all of those research teams, so we can't give false results to them," the supreme commander said, "And because of this, we will loose a large deal of our control over their numbers now. Why else do you think our draconic warriors are nearly infertile?"

"You're implying that their infertility is intentional. Why would you do such a thing?!" Decaan asked in disbelief.

"Do you honestly believe that any hybrids born would remain loyal to our people as their parents are? With their strength, they could easily usurp our world's government. That's why we had to ensure that their ability to reproduce was next to non-existent and they would need to rely on us to produce more of their kind. And to minimize dissension, our draconic warriors are carefully selected based purely on their bodies and their loyalty to us," the man said as Decaan kept getting angrier with every word, "We can't take the risk of a rebellion that could unseat us from power." That shit was intentional!? Now I feel a lot less sympathetic to these pricks and I'm definitely going to tell Clark Grisweld and Cassandra about this bullshit. But it's odd that General Detar didn't seem to be aware of this. I wonder why that is. Perhaps he is a lower ranked general and didn't have a high enough rank to be made aware of it. I remember hearing that generals on Earth were ranked by the number of stars they had. Maybe they have something similar on this world.  

"So you mean that I can't have children with the woman I love because you're afraid of a possible future?" Decaan growled in barely restrained anger and all of the uniformed holograms, aside from this supreme commander, glared at him. Oh, shit. That's my cue to prepare an escape route for Decaan. Before they could say anything, Maxine created a portal in Decaan's shadow. She readied herself to get him out of there at a moment's notice should things take a turn for the worst.

"That's right, Decaan," the supreme commander said cruelly, "So I suggest that you find another woman because she will never give you a child."

Decaan only glared at them before he ripped his military ID card out of his pocket and tossed it at their feet. "So be it then," he growled as he walked way. 

"Where do you think you are you going?" the supreme commander asked.

"To find a job in the agricultural sector. My skills and knowledge will be better suited to feeding our people rather than stabbing them in the back," Decaan snapped just before he left the room.

"He can't be serious," the supreme commander said, "He will never enjoy that kind of work."

"I don't think he cares and you're wrong. He never enjoyed his work. He only did what he thought our people needed most," General Detar said sadly, "And congratulations, you've just done is driven off one of our best minds to do something that is beneith him. No doubt word will get out about this meeting."

"If your nephew is that stupid, he will be killed as a result. You know that," the supreme commander said warningly.

"Oh, it's not my nephew that will talk. It's Maxine," General Detar said with cruel smile of his own, "She sent her pets to harrass me whenever I try to lay my head down to sleep. Probably because she believes that I'm the one that betrayed her. I can live with it if that's the limit of her wrath against me, but I imagine she's letting me off easy since I'm Decaan's uncle. What's more important though is that those pets dwell within my shadow and if it isn't obvious to you, you can just assume that whatever her pets hear, she will too." I guess he isn't a total idiot since he guessed that much.

"And you only now tell us this?!" the supreme commander roared.

"You got a problem with that?" General Detar said smugly, "Good, because I have a problem of my own I want to get out in the open. My problem is that I'm tired of seeing my nephew unhappy. That Maxine was a puzzle to him and it perked him up more than anything has in years. He even started smiling again when he spent time with Commander Cassandra and after I got the report that this Maxine could heal, I was hoping, praying even, that she would heal Cassandra. That way my nephew could be with her and return to being the smiling boy that he was before his parents died. But now I know that you wouldn't allow it even if Cassandra were healed. No wonder the fairies left us. We've become rotten." Wow, I knew he cared for Decaan. But did he have to add that bit on the end? Even I can feel the provocation in his tone.

"You're clearly too emotional at the moment to continue with your duties," the surpreme commander said with terrifying calm, "General Kazan will relieve you shortly."

"Fine, but you best not harm myself or my nephew," General Detar said warningly as he started walking away, "I've got a trove of secrets that would be released the moment of either of our deaths that would most certainly cause every last general to get lynched. I can only imagine what would happen to you, Supreme Commander Callent."

After General Detar left, the supreme commander Callent said, "Ensure that both Detar and his nephew are given unrestricted access to the front line. They will no doubt have an urge to go to Commander Cassandra's side and while your at it, find out who has those secrets Detar mentioned before that city falls. We can't risk loosing our power due to our secrets getting out." Ahh, now I get it. These fuckers somehow came to power during one of the previous invasions. People, who gain power using underhanded methods, are always worried that they will loose their power. Idiots. If they didn't want that to happen, they should avoid pissing off their own people. 

"Understood, sir," the assembled generals said before the supreme commander's hologram winked out. 

Maxine returned her focus to Decaan. He was heading back to his apartment. She knew they were going to make him head to the frontline but she didn't know how they were going to do it. Thus she continued to watch him to make sure he wasn't ambushed.

Nothing happened before he got home or while he was packing his clothes into a large duffel. She found it odd that they hadn't jumped him yet. He took over a few hours to pack his clothes and other various items and after he left home he seemed to be heading to a transport hub. Mere moments before Decaan reached it, the soldiers guarding it seemed to be expecting him.

"Sir, what is your planned destination?" the soldier asked Decaan as soon as he approached.

"City 37," Decaan answered. There naming sense is just awesome and screams 'I'm an uninventive and lazy jackass.' 

"Very good, sir," the soldier said as he approached Decaan and whispered into his ear, "I don't know how you got clearance to go to there, but we were told to let you through. I hope you're aware of just how dangerous it is in that city at the moment."

"Thank you, soldier," Decaan said with a straight face, "But I'm well aware of the risks on heading to the front line."

"Understood," the soldier said and gestured towards one of the landing pads, "Please head to landing pad seven. The transport ship will be taking off in the next half hour to head to city 37." Okay, that's probably the city closest to the fighting and if I'm not wrong, that's also where Cassandra is. Well that will make it easier to find her and heal her.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Decaan quickly boarded the ship as directed and five minutes before the ship took off, General Detar got onto it with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. They stared at each other for a moment before General Detar took a seat, but neither of them said a word.

It wasn't until after the ship took off that General Detar spoke, "What are you planning, Decaan?"

"I'm going to find Cassandra. After that, I don't know," Decaan said softly. Maxine swiftly scanned the ship for listening devices and prevented Decaan and General Detar's voices from reaching them.

"Are you going to tell her the truth?" General Detar asked. 

"I... I don't know," Decaan said, "The logical part of me says no, but my emotions say otherwise. I want them to pay for what they have done."

"Bury those emotions, right now," General Detar told Decaan, "We are in the middle of a war and we can't afford to have our forces split over this."

"I know," Decaan said in defeat.

"Good," General Detar said sadly, "We can revisit this discussion, but only after the war is over."

"You're assuming they will let us live that long," Decaan said grimly, "It won't take them that long to find whomever is holding those secrets for you."

"I doubt that very much," General Detar said with a vicious grin.

"You seem confident about that," Decaan said, "Why is that?"

"I can't say," General Detar said, "There are listening devices on this ship." He's sharp or he was the one that suggested they put them on the ships in the first place.

"Fine, but you're telling me later," Decaan said grumpily.

"I will. Just be patient," General Detar said. Decaan nodded and both of them went silent.

Maxine was about to retract her spiritual sense, but stopped when she noticed Decaan was trying to cultivate. Oh? That was fast. I wonder what changes he made to it. She took a quick look and nodded her head in understanding. He had modified the technique only minimally, but it had been adjusted to work perfectly with his physiology. But what shocked her was the fact he was cultivating three energies at once. However, the rate at which he gathered essence and ki was only a fourth of the rate that his mana gathered. Oh, my fucking god. He's not just a intelectual genius, but a monsterous cultivation genius as well. I wish we had someone like him on Earth when we were developing our own cultivation technique. It wouldn't have taken us nearly as long to make it. She wanted to congratulate him, but didn't dare do it. She didn't want to distract him and damage his future accomplishments.

Maxine retracted her spiritual sense and tried to meditate. But she couldn't get in the right frame of mind. She felt like someone was watching her, but she knew full well that no one was in the room. However after her fifth attempt to settle her mind, she felt the faintest of breezes on her face. Wind? Down here? The air conditioning probably just turned on.

Maxine waited to see if this breeze would get weaker, but instead it got stronger as time went one. And the moment that she heard a faint high frequency sound, her hand lashed out and grabbed onto something. It was a small woman roughly the same size as a barbie doll. 

She quickly opened her eyes and confirmed that she was holding a tiny woman slowly that was becoming slowly fading into existence within her grasp. The tiny woman looked terrified, but what really drew Maxine's attention were four narrow insect-like wings coming out of the tiny woman's back. Holy shit, it's a fairy. 

"Please, don't don't crush me," the fairy pleaded in forest elf, "I promise I'll leave you alone."

"Why would I crush you?" Maxine asked in forest elf as she released the fairy and watched her begin to hover by nearly soundlessly flapping her wings.

"Because that's what humans did to us in the past after they nearly wiped out our elven protectors," the fairy said fearfully, but her expression turned to one of shock, "Huh? How do you understand me? Humans don't speak this language."

"I'm not exactly human," Maxine retorted as she transformed into her shadow lord form, "And your people should have no fear of humans. They worship fairies. If you appeared infront of them, they would probably hold a massive feast in your honor."

"Really?" the fairy asked disbelievingly, "But why didn't the Petal and the others return to let us know that?"

"I havn't heard anything about fairies appearing in any city," Maxine said, "When did Petal go with the others? And who did they approach first?"

"They approached the human leaders two winters ago," the little fairy said, "I really, really need to go now." Hmm, that's suspicious as fuck.

"Bye then," Maxine said and the fairy flew with surprising speed at one of the walls. She moved to stop the fairy from commiting suicide, but was dumbstruck when a glowing blue portal appeared on the wall the moment before the fairy hit it. What the fuck?! Why didn't I detect that before? It should glow to my spiritual sense like the sun.

Maxine carefully scanned the wall with her spiritual sense, but didn't find anything besides concrete and steel. It was just a wall. It had no special markings and didn't emit any kind of energy. I know it's there, but I can't find it. It has to be a concealment array, but why won't it activate when I touch it? Is it race sensitive? If that's the case, it's way higher level than anything I've seen or heard about and that fairy was far too weak to be able to place it herself. So that means they must have a few gold stage cultivators amongst their number. But I can still see why they hide. Their diminitive size makes it really hard to injure someone a full rank below them that's normal sized.

She had a sudden thought and looked at the door. But something was making it very hard for her to focus her eyes on it and a feeling of dread formed in her thoughts when she was able to focus on it. Another array? And it's a clever one too. It keeps keeps anyone from seeing it clearly and to top it off, they make whomever sees the door feel like approaching it will mean their death. It's a non-lethal way of keeping people out.

She spent a few hours examining each surface of the room to see if she could find even a single portal in this room, but her efforts were wasted. She released a sigh and checked on Decaan. He had arrived at his destination, but he looked very distraught as he ran into a specialized hospital that was constantly bringing draconic warriors into it. Oh, no.

Maxine quickly threw her spiritual sense into the hospital and found Cassandra close to the top floor. She was in bad shape. The doctors did their best to patch her up, but her body's sheer durability made it very difficult. She had three stab wounds on her stomach and another on her left arm. The wounds on her stomach were deep enough to be life-threatening if she weren't gold stage, but Maxine detected poison in her wounds. She would die without help in the next few hours. 

Within minutes, Decaan burst into the room and his eyes landed on Cassandra's bandaged form. He quickly went to her side and grabbed her hand gently. "How is she?" Decaan asked the nurse in the room.

"She's badly injured and is suffering from a poison we can't identify," the nurse replied.

"I see. Thank you for your service. I will take over from here," Decaan said and once the nurse left the room, he placed the pendant she gave him around Cassandra's neck, "Where are you Maxine? She needs you."

[I can be there at a moment's notice, but first lock that door. I don't want to be interrupted while I diagnose and heal her,] Maxine said via spiritual sense and Decaan looked around wildly, [Don't bother looking for me. I'm not actually there. I'm speaking to you telepathically. Now, do as I said and lock that door.] Decaan moved to the hospital room door before closing and locking it. Next he moved to close all of the curtains in the room to avoid any passerbys from seeing Maxine.

With a thought, Maxine created a portal in the shadow of the bed and went through it. She appeared to rise up out of the floor to Decaan's eyes. "You really are a telepath," Decaan said to himself as if he just realized it, "I had my suspicions, but you just confirmed it."

"I thought you would've known that after the last time we talked," Maxine said, "Now, let me see about that poison coursing through Cassandra's body." She gently drew a small amount of Cassandra's poison laced blood and tasted it. She immediately grimaced with disgust as she felt heat in her loins, but her biology quickly neutralized the poison. It was an aphrodisiac so strong that it was toxic. It would kill anyone silver stage or weaker if they didn't have sex. Normally, Cassandra would be able to ignore it, but with her injuries, she was very vunerable to it. 

"What's wrong?" Decaan asked.

"The invaders have a really sick mentality that's what's wrong," Maxine answered, "The poison in her veins is an aphrodisiac, a really potent one too." On a side note, using a super potent aphrodisiac as a poison is kind of brilliant. Who would think to have sex while this badly injured?   

"How do we treat her without doing any damage?" Decaan asked worriedly.

Maxine just gave him a wierd look before she answered, "I can heal her wounds and the aphrodisiac should work itself out of her system."

"Then please do that," Decaan practically begged Maxine. I was already planning on that. She quickly scanned the room for any listening devices and found three. Figures. Well, time to test my acting skills.

"Alright. I will even fix her reproductive issues as well, but I can only do it for her. It takes something from me to repair something so delicate and it's not something that I can recover easily," Maxine lied for whomever was listening in. 

"I ... I understand. Just save her, please," Decaan openly begged.

"Just sit over there and be quiet. I need to concentrate," Maxine said truthfully. Decaan nodded and quickly sat down on a chair, but he pulled out a strange device. I bet that's going to take a full spectral analysis of what I'm about to do. Perhaps he'll figure out how to simulate my healing energies. Although it will be a long time before anyone figures out how to focus it properly.

Maxine touched Cassandra's shoulder and scanned her body thoroughly to make sure she didn't miss anything. Her wounds weren't any nastier than before and just like she suspected, the aphrodisiac diverting her body's resources away from healing. 

With that in mind, Maxine used her energies to heal the stab wounds. It was extremely slow going and far more draining than she expected. Afterall, Cassandra was the strongest person that she had ever needed to heal. She needed to use twice as much of her energy as she expected. I should still be able to fully heal her, but I'll have less than ten percent of my strength left after this. 

She nearly finished healing the stab wounds when she heard someone knocking on the door. "Um, sir. We need to change her bandages," a nurse said. Shit, that's bad timing. I still havn't restored her reproductive ability.

"I need another four minutes," Maxine said as she continued healing Cassandra.

Decaan opened the door gently and said, "She's sleeping. Just hand me the bandages and I will change them once she wakes up."

"Her wounds are in sensitive areas," the nurse explained with a slight blush to her cheeks.

"I've already seen her naked, and I've had training as a medic. So this shouldn't be an issue," Decaan retorted with a straight face as he snatch the fresh bandages out of the nurse's hands before shutting the door. That should buy us enough time.

"What's going on? Is Decaan here?" Cassandra said in confusion as she awoke, "I need him."

Decaan rushed to her side. "I'm here," Decaan said. Well, this is going to be interesting.

"Make love to me," Cassandra said boldly as she grabbed him and pulled him into a deep kiss. Wow, I thought she would resist the aphrodisiac a little bit. She just kicked my expectations to the curb.

Decaan was able to disengage from the kiss after nearly thirty seconds and said firmly, "No, you're not in your right mind. I won't take advantage of you while you're under the effects of a drug."

"Please, Decaan," Cassandra begged.

"That's enough out of you," Maxine complained and directed a quick burst of her spriitual sense into Cassandra's head to knock her out. If she had been fully cognizant, a move like that wouldn't have worked.

"What did you do to her?!" Decaan demanded.

"I knocked her out. Now I just need to do the finishing touches on her healing," Maxine said with a lack of energy and began to heal Cassandra's ovaries. Rejuvenating each of her eggs was exhausting. She finished up with just enough energy to send herself back to where she was before.

"All done," Maxine announced with barely any strength in her voice, "I need to go now. If you guys need anything, just do what you did before. I should hear it." She didn't even wait for a reply before she jumped into the portal back to her hiding spot. 

Once she was through her portal, she closed it off and promptly collapsed onto the ground panting. Never again will I use up that much of my strength. There is a fucking war going on and I'm going to use as much of my strength as I can to train myself thoroughly. Still, the four-horned kanzils must be including gold stagers in their assault if Cassandra got injured like that. I guess it's time for me to rejoin the fighting to even things out and if the opportunity presents itself, I will kill their leader. He already saw how dangerous I can be, and he still tried to capture me. He had his chance and I'm tired of playing nice with people who don't return the curtesy. That also makes me curious as to what is in that facility that they were going to put me into. If I'm lucky, the fairies that disappeared could be inside of it. I will send a raven to do a little recon to find out.