“I didn’t say it was a long story,” she said defensively.
“No, but you said it was funny,” Kaln snapped. “Do I look amused?”
Vadaralshi twisted her head to an angle, studying him. “Little bit? But I figured your face was just shaped that way. You’re a smiley kind of guy.”
He turned a cold shoulder to her, staring out across the formerly green and lush valley. Fully half of it was on fire now; the smoke was just rising to the level that the smell was overpowering. It was producing enough heat to make him sweat even at this altitude, too. At this rate it wouldn’t be too long before he had to retreat back under Atraximos’s wards, which Kaln hoped would protect the air quality. They did everything else.
“How many people live down there?” he asked. “Izayaroa said something about bandits.”
“You are worried?” Vanimax snorted incredulously. “About bandits?”
“You’re both right,” Vadaralshi interjected. “It’s not just garden-variety bandits who come to Dragonvale, but the worst of the worst—the ones so wanted in other countries that living right under dragons is a better alternative. This valley is a staging area and headquarters for planning raids on the outlying communities. Also they all have their encampments right along the rivers for exactly this reason.”
“You burn down the valley fairly often, huh.”
“We…tried to avoid it,” Vanimax said sourly. “Atraximos threw a fit every time. It being all charred spoiled his view. Not that it was even usually our fault; if it wasn’t one of us, it was a lightning strike or some idiot mortal with a campfire. The fact it went up so easily says it was overdue. What’s it been, Ralshi? Five years, ten?”
“Something like that.”
“Overdue?” Kaln exclaimed. “You’re not seriously trying to convince me the forest is supposed to burn down at regular intervals!”
Both dragons swiveled their necks to stare at him incredulously.
“Yes?” Vanimax said, frowning.
“Oh, that’s right, you’re from Rhivaak. Not a lot of woodlands down south.” Vadaralshi grinned at him. “Yes, Pants, fires are part of a forest’s life cycle. Most of the trees will survive; the rest will make room for new ones. It clears out the built-up underbrush, which also creates room for new growth, and ash rejuvenates the nutrients in the soil. There are some plant and tree species which require fire to propagate properly.”
“Now I know you’re making that up.”
“I don’t know about that last part, plants requiring fire,” Vanimax grumbled, “but then, I don’t really know botany. The rest is correct, though.”
“Go ask Pheneraxa!” Vadaralshi protested. “She knows way too much about a lot of things and is not motivated to keep us out of trouble. And speaking of that, just for the record, Vanimax was the only one breathing fire.”
Vanimax turned to hiss at her.
“Yeah, be mad about it if you want, but you were!”
“Mm hm,” Kaln grunted. “Delivered in the defensive tone of someone who definitely had nothing to do with why he was breathing fire.”
Vadaralshi stared at him with her mouth open, then deliberately swiveled her head to gaze nonchalantly out over the burning valley. Vanimax grinned.
Coughing, Kaln waved a hand in front of his face to waft away smoke, which didn’t really work. “Right. Well…the Timekeepers built everything with ludicrous precision. Are these doors airtight?”
“How would we know?” Vanimax demanded. “I don’t think we’ve ever bothered to shut them.”
“I assure you, we’re not bothered by smoke,” Vadaralshi added with a huge draconian smirk.
“Time to find out. This household now has a human guest for whom air is a necessity. And—ack—it turns out godlings need oxygen, too. Commander!”
The ghost leader of the Phantom Legion materialized from nowhere before him, saluting.
“I need these doors shut as soon as I’m back inside,” said Kaln. “Station guards on both sides, and open them for any of the household who need to get through. Once all this dissipates and the air is clear, we’ll keep them open again.”
The commander saluted him, turned, and made a series of rapid gestures at the two ghost soldiers who stood flanking the door. Both saluted in response.
“Any other entrances?” Kaln asked.
“They’re all on the other side of the mountain,” said Vadaralshi. “We’ll be able to smell it everywhere, but the actual smoke won’t make it that far around unless the weather does something really weird. And the library door won’t let any smoke through anyway, Emmy has weatherproof enchantments layered on it to protect her precious books. I think the bath is the only one that can’t be closed off.”
“Right, sounds good. Guess I’d better go check on our guest anyway. In or out, you two.”
The dragons exchanged a look over his head as he stepped forward toward the open doors, then silently followed him back inside.
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“Wow,” Pheneraxa drawled shortly thereafter when Kaln had updated her. “I honestly thought Vanimax would go more than a few minutes before causing a new catastrophe. Though in hindsight I don’t know why.”
“They claim the forest needs regular fires as part of its…life cycle?”
“Yes, well, that’s true enough,” she agreed. “Actually…it’s been a few years, hasn’t it? So it would have happened before much longer either way. That doesn’t mean we can’t blame the idiot who was spewing fire everywhere, of course, it merely adds some context.”
“So that’s why I smelled smoke,” Percy said, frowning in concern. “I thought maybe that was…normal.”
“Dragonfire has a different scent than wood smoke,” Kaln said with a smile. “More…hm, not quite sulfurous? More…mineral. Does that make any sense?”
“Not really.”
He blinked, Pheneraxa grinned, and Percy just looked nonplussed.
“I guess I’ll probably find out soon enough,” she continued after a moment. “Hopefully not too close… So, um, does Vanimax tend to…cause a lot of trouble?”
“This is more acting out than he’s done in a very long time,” Pheneraxa sneered. “Not that he’s good for anything on his best day, but generally? No, things are usually quieter around here. We are in something of a transitional state these days.”
“I don’t think you should talk about your brother that way,” Percy stated.
Pheneraxa gaped at her in astonishment.
“Nobody wants to be useless,” the princess continued earnestly. “Well…maybe some people do, but I don’t think that’s very many. And even so, it hurts to be told that you are. If he was actually useless he’d be lazy and nobody would hear from him. If he’s going out doing foolish things and causing problems… He probably wants to help, or at least be involved. It sounds like he just doesn’t know how.”
Both of them regarded her in silence, Kaln smiling, Pheneraxa still looking stupefied.
“That’s…what I think, anyway,” Percy added uncomfortably.
“Well,” Pheneraxa finally said, “you’re quick to forgive.”
“I don’t think so,” Percy said with a frown. “The Flock say that it’s better to give forgiveness than receive it, but…no, I’m not there yet. What he did to me was very upsetting. I’m just starting to be over being terrified enough to get angry. None of that means I can’t think about why he might go out and do something so awful, though. That’s a separate matter.”
“As it happens, I think you’re right,” said Kaln, “but all that is a conversation for another time. Since we’re good and buttoned up in here at least until the smoke clears, we should work on getting this place more comfortable for you. And for me, for that matter.”
“This does seem like a curious way to set up your sleeping arrangements,” Percy commented, turning to study Kaln’s enormous fur-padded bed in the center of the open space.
“And I’ve been curious to see how this works,” Pheneraxa added. “I’ve never actually been in here until today, much less observed the wards in action.”
“Really?” Percy asked. “Wasn’t this your father’s room?”
“He wasn’t a ‘father’ in the sense that any human culture I’m aware of means it. None of us ever had a positive interaction with him.”
“Wow. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised Atraximos the Dread was a miserable person, but…you’d think things would be different among family.”
“Some of history’s greatest villains were complex people with surprising depths, Percy. Atraximos was not one of those. He just sucked.”
While they talked, Kaln had been focusing on the wards. Thus concentrating, he could feel the hoard itself—his hoard. His ability to find and retrieve items from the storage vaults also applied to the stuff out here. And, he observed, to the various racks, stands, and display cases as well. All of it was his to move, to place at will. He didn’t even need to organize the storage, it would take instructions as simple as “in or out of the main room” and arrange everything for optimal efficiency. As someone who’d had to organize a few storage rooms in his day, this was the greatest magic imaginable.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Percy gasped when everything began to disappear. It wasn’t quite instantaneous, for the whole lot of it; the effect passed through the rooms in waves, treasures and their displays vanishing like falling dominoes. It took barely a second for the entire collection to be removed, leaving the huge vault bare.
Mostly.
“You missed a spot,” Pheneraxa pointed out, grinning. “Or…don’t tell me those things are impervious to the wards? Timekeeper materials are indestructible but I’ve never heard of them being impossible to teleport.”
“No,” Kaln said, looking over at the section of the chamber in which the various Timekeeper devices and objects were still on display, the silent Timegate looming in their midst. “Honestly? Just because I don’t want to live in a museum doesn’t mean I don’t like to see artifacts displayed. And those…are nifty.”
“That’s a word,” Pheneraxa agreed, shooting him a sidelong smirk.
“That’s so strange,” Percy mused. “The room looks smaller with less stuff in it. Doesn’t that seem strange? It seems like it should be the opposite.”
In addition to the Timekeeper section, Kaln had left his bed where it had been, now surrounded by ominous emptiness, and off to the side stood his improvised sitting area with its gaudily ostentatious furnishings. Also the neatly labeled map still stood by the door. He now knew it was tied in to the ward network—would be able to feel that even if he couldn’t see it neatly showing the altered contents of the room.
“Now comes the…hm.”
“Problem?” Pheneraxa asked when Kaln trailed off.
“I’m looking through the collection,” he said, frowning. “I’ve hit a bit of a snag, yes.”
“But you’re not doing—oh, is this a mental interface?” Percy asked. “You just think about it and you can move things around? The Court Mage told me that’s incredibly hard to set up. She made fun of me for asking.”
“Atraximos was a dragon,” Pheneraxa said. “He was no Emeralaphine, but if you live for a long enough time as an apex power, you tend to acquire interesting abilities.”
“Where did it all go? Some kind of dimensional storage, like a bag of holding?”
“Nothing as exotic as that, there’s a whole row of chambers about this size deeper in the mountain,” Kaln said, still frowning at his inner ward interface. “You could walk to them through normal corridors, though he kept all the doors locked. No reason not to, I suppose, when the contents can be retrieved this easily. No, the issue I’ve encountered is that… He’s got everything in there except building materials.”
“Why did you expect to find building materials in his hoard?” Pheneraxa asked, grinning even more widely.
“I guess that’s one of those assumptions that stops making sense when you actually think about it. Tiavathyris has altered her chamber with permanent structures, but apparently Atraximos wasn’t planning on doing the same. Hm, this is going to make the core task more difficult than I thought. There are a good few folding screens in there—all very expensive and fancy, a few enchanted. It’s not the same as walls, though. Well, none of it should be hard to acquire, it’ll just take a while. Percy, I think the best I’ll be able to do at least at first is get us set up with separate…encampments, I guess. It’ll be less private than I’d hoped—”
“Now, let’s not give up prematurely,” Pheneraxa interrupted. “Just because you don’t have something suitable right at hand doesn’t mean you don’t have options. For one thing, you have three highly capable consorts, at least two of whom are currently on speaking terms with you.”
“I don’t think we should disturb your mother right now,” he said warily. “She’s still enchanting those new books. I got the distinct impression she doesn’t love being interrupted mid-project.”
“Correct impression, but actually, that wasn’t what I had in mind. You just told us the answer yourself, Kaln.”
“Oh? Oh!”
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“It is not an imposition, husband,” Tiavathyris assured him, standing at his side in his own chamber and watching the ghosts carrying in stacks upon stacks of simple structural materials. Once within the wards of the chamber, he could vanish them into the storage rooms, whereupon the ghosts would flicker out of the way to make room for the next squad. “These were made for me by an acquaintance of mine centuries ago—a conjurer and artificer, a potent combination of specializations for a mage. I used only a fraction of it, in the end, to set up my own chamber to my liking, and I have kept the rest mostly out of sentiment. He was a good friend, now long passed. I know he would be much happier to see his works being put to use than sitting in my storage.”
“Then I am doubly honored by the gift,” Kaln said, smiling up at her even as he teleported the next shipment into storage. “These really are fantastic, too! It’s like…building blocks, but not for children.”
“Like, nothing, that’s exactly what these are,” said Pheneraxa. At her request, Kaln had set aside a selection of the structural objects for her to play with—or study, as she had irritably corrected him. She and Percy were both off to the side, now, assembling miscellaneous piles of things.
He could see the appeal. The objects Tiavathyris had donated were a collection of blocks, wall and floor segments, pillars, and supports made of stone, wood, and some alloy that clearly couldn’t be Timesteel but was the same golden-bronze color. There were also windows, none of which Tiavathyris had used in her own construction, both empty frames of wood and metal and some filled with glass. All of them were in large numbers, made to exactingly identical specifications, and came with a wide selection of fasteners and attachments which fitted neatly into notches cleverly placed along all the larger pieces. When assembled they snapped together with a precision beyond the scope of any non-Timekeeper metalwork Kaln had seen. No blacksmith could do this; it would take a team of engineers.
Or, apparently, a magical artificer who had a dual specialization in conjuration.
Pheneraxa was just making abstract sculptures of building parts to test out all the different ways the connectors fit together. Percy had assembled an archway out of pillars and support beams and was now attaching fixtures to hang a door in it.
It was good to see them having fun. Tiavathyris’s smile told him she agreed, though out of respect for draconic and royal pride, neither of them said so out loud.
“What did you use to decorate yours?” he asked her instead. “Please don’t take this for ingratitude—I’ll be more than happy to just use them as is, and it would still be nicer-looking accommodations than I’ve slept in recently. But the structures in your chambers definitely don’t look like these.”
“Ah, have you not encountered the illusion function in the wards, then?”
Kaln blinked. “They can do illusions?”
“Knowing Atraximos,” she said with a faint smile, “I suspect they were first designed to prevent any outside actors from bringing glamours or stealth in here. They are capable of controlling the appearances of objects in the collection, though. All those fancy display cases he used to have in this chamber? Plain wooden crates. Be glad you have the wards to handle them, else they might have given you splinters.”
“Huh.” Reaching out mentally into the storage, he found she was right: there were no beautiful gilt-edged glass-topped display cases, but only a large collection of rough wooden crates that hadn’t been there before. Somehow that seemed utterly in character for Atraximos. Not only pompous, but lazy and cheap.
It also caused him a prickle of unease, remembering he had first come in here under a stealth effect which these very wards had failed to defeat. Powerful as they were, he must never become too complacent—about either his safety here, or the capabilities of the Entity which was very much not done with him.
Kaln reached out with his mind, concentrated on Pheneraxa’s increasingly precarious tower of fastenings and contraptions, and pictured something else.
She jerked back in surprise as the stack of fastener-adorned blocks suddenly became a Rhivkabat-style obelisk: black marble engraved with an excerpt from Izayaroa’s writings on political philosophy in Vhii calligraphy on each side.
“Do you mind?” the dragon said irritably. “Now I can’t see what I am working on.”
Kaln grinned at her and changed it back, once again revealing her base construction, and then changed it again so that all the pieces appeared to be solid gold.
She snorted and resumed connecting a hinge to one side. “How unutterably gauche. I’m sure Atraximos would have loved it.”
“That’s marvelous,” Kaln said with unfeigned enthusiasm, restoring her building blocks to their normal appearance and turning back to Tiavathyris. “Once again, my lady wife, I find myself in your debt.”
“I am certain you’d have stumbled across that function in your own time,” she replied, smiling back. “I know not what if any background you have in architecture, husband, so I will simply caution you that while these materials are the finest magic can create, they are not themselves magical. They are exceedingly difficult to damage and will hold up more weight than normal wood, stone, or metal, but…physics still applies. Thank you, Pheneraxa, for the demonstration.”
Pheneraxa’s tower had just toppled over as she attempted to hang a swinging shutter on one side of it. The young dragon made a disgruntled face and bent to begin disassembling her creation to try again.
“Hmm…I wonder…”
Tiavathyris watched him expectantly, but the girls were too distracted by their own projects to react to Kaln’s murmuring, at least until he focused his attention and an entire house suddenly materialized a few paces away from them.
Granted, it wasn’t much of a house: just a glorified box, really, one story tall and with just enough floor space to fit a bed. But it had a floor and a roof—a flat one—a door and two glass windows.
“Ooh,” Percy applauded.
“Now that is handy,” Kaln said with enthusiasm. “The sorting function of the wards works really well with the interlocking pieces. If I can picture clearly enough what I want, it’ll assemble it for me! Which is especially useful since I actually don’t know a thing about architecture.”
As a finishing touch he added a layer of illusion, making the little free-standing structure match the Timestone walls.
“Fake Timestone seems like it could be a hazard,” Pheneraxa said skeptically. “What if someone mistakes it for impervious and breaks these lovely irreplaceable pieces?”
“Pheneraxa, why would anyone be in my chambers trying to smash the walls?”
“Do I need to remind you that Vanimax lives here?”
“Oh, but that’s absolutely wonderful!” Percy enthused. “It’s so convenient! I wonder why all construction isn’t done this way?”
“I’m afraid that simply isn’t economical,” Tiavathyris answered, smiling with muted amusement. “The ward network that makes this possible is comparable to a planned city in its own intricacy, and those building pieces are masterworks crafted by an archmage. If this solution could be scaled up, I’m certain Izayaroa would have already rebuilt Rhivkabat this way.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” Percy agreed, looking more crestfallen than Kaln thought this disappointment warranted.
“In any case, your Highness,” Tiavathyris continued, “I have a gift for you as well.”
“Oh?” Percy blinked owlishly, then looked confused, and then nervous. “Oh, you…you don’t have to do that.”
“If I had to, it would not be much of a gift.” Kaln felt Tiavathyris invoke a quick piece of magic, too fast for him to focus enough to analyze the spell, and suddenly she was holding a segmented strip of gold, steel, and glossy red material. “I realize I have no claim on Vanimax or his antics, but I cannot help feeling some responsibility. Besides, hospitality is a foundational virtue in all civilized cultures. Please accept this, in my earnest hope that it will make your time here more comfortable.”
“Jewelry?” Percy tilted her head inquisitively; she did reach for the bracelet Tiavathyris extended toward her, though her motions were hesitant. “Oh, that’s quite lovely. Thank you very much. I almost fear it would be wasted on me, though. I’ve been told often enough that adornments don’t suit me.”
“That is certainly debatable,” Tiavathyris replied, “but in any case, this is a more practical gift. That object is powerfully enchanted. Specifically, it has a potent anti-dragon charm.”
“Anti dragon?” Kaln repeated.
“If I’m not mistaken,” Pheneraxa added, frowning in consternation, “is that not made partly from dragonscale?”
“Yes. Your father’s scales, specifically; his are the most likely to have been left lying around where mortals might find them.”
“Why would you even have something like that?”
Tiavathyris gave Pheneraxa a level stare, all trace of her smile gone. Immediately Pheneraxa backed up, hunching her neck in an instinctive posture of submission that didn’t work quite as well in this form as in her larger one.
“I ask only out of curiosity.”
“In fact, there is a predictable chain of events resulting in the creation of artifacts custom-designed to aid dragonslayers,” Tiavathyris answered after a long moment. “It begins with a dragon up to something that clearly must be stopped, and more often than not ends with said artifacts in said dragon’s possession, where they are usually squirreled away against the prospect of any future adventurer getting their hands on them. I should think there are more such objects in the Evervales than anywhere else in the world at the moment, and the lions share of those by far in Atraximos’s own hoard. I have managed to acquire a few here and there.”
“I…I don’t want to slay any dragons,” Percy said nervously. “You’ve all been so kind I’m skeptical it would even be called for, and I’m not a…that is…”
“Worry not, Princess,” Tiavathyris said gently. “That is purely a protective charm. I would caution you not to rely on it overmuch; it would avail you little if a dragon actually attacked you with hostile intent. However, that is not a likely prospect here. I will feel more comfortable if you have a measure of insurance against accident, carelessness, or temper tantrum. Since we have seen examples of all of the above from at least one of our number recently.”
“Oh. Oh! Well, that is incredibly thoughtful. Thank you very much, Tiav…father…iss?”
“Close enough,” she said, smiling. “Don’t worry too much, Princess, we are well aware that our names are mouthfuls in the context of most mortal languages. I will caution you not to shorten them, however. Most dragons who are willing to talk to mortals at all will have a sense of humor about understandable slips of the tongue, but the giving of a nickname is a great intimacy, which will give great offense if it is unearned.”
“Duly noted, yes,” Percy said, nodding emphatically. “And thank you very much for the warning.”
Kaln took note of the warning, as well. He rather wished someone had thought to mention it to him earlier.
“I advise wearing that somewhere unobtrusive, Percy,” Pheneraxa suggested. “Like around your ankle. I don’t anticipate any specific trouble from it, but a dragon seeing such a thing unexpectedly might react…unpredictably. And as I’ve recently mentioned, Vanimax lives here.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea, yes.” Percy knelt, then overbalanced and fell onto her rump. From there she pulled her skirts out of the way, trying to reach her ankle with both hands full of the magical bracelet. She didn’t appear to be very flexible.
“Would you like help?” Pheneraxa asked, fighting a smile.
“Yes please, thank you.”
“Well!” Kaln made the little proof-of-concept house disappear back into storage in pieces. “Now we are getting somewhere! The question then is what’s the best way to arrange this place. Ladies, would you like to participate in the process? Or would you rather I bring out some more blocks for you to play with?”
“We weren’t playing,” Pheneraxa said acidly, baring her teeth up at him.
“I was,” said Percy frankly. “Those are extremely satisfying.”
He smiled at her, then at Tiavathyris. She smiled back, and nodded once to him, deeply.
Already, progress.