I retreated from the dragon after telling her I understood. They had me stuck because while I could free them to move, breaking the chains was beyond my ability. I knew that from the first dragon and it was probably why the chains were made to bind to their souls. The soul strength of a dragon was beyond anyone except the dragon whose soul was bound. The same innate magic that let them create shards protected their captures in some odd twist of fate.
By now I understood the shards were created though the soul of the dragon, the big reveal was learning that every shard released from a particular dragon was five complete shards, forming the star core that true mages needed. The shards broke apart when the dragon released them, or they should have. Except in this situation the dragons were controlled allowing the shards to be collected as a whole. The nobility was the one breaking them up, again allowing them control over who got power.
None of this was news to me, what did make me worry was how did the king learn it? To my knowledge there was no book or story about it, no lore spoke about this. So how did they know? The knowledge once gained must have been passed down through the generations, that part was easy to figure out. But how did they know the first time? And none of that touches on how they had forced the lord of dragons to give up some of his magic. So many questions without many real answers.
The important question that I had to answer before I could act was simpler. Who all knew? I would have to kill anyone with the knowledge, there was no other choice. If this was turned into legend or lore and it got out there wouldn’t be a way to protect the new dragons and again the cycle would repeat. That couldn’t be allowed, this must not happen again not if I could stop it here. It looked like I was off to the capital, I had to somehow interrogate a king. For expediency sake I would try and steal the queens ring first.
Thinking of the problems as a whole made me think of another option, one that might work. If I removed the dirt around the ice dragon, stole the queens ring and than went to the capital it would let the two dragons work together when the acted. It would not only be the most efficient use of my time but could result in less destruction. Okay that was honestly a pipe dream, these two dragons were more powerful than the others and the destruction they caused would be horrendous.
Still it just made sense to work in that order. Remove the earth, steal the queens ring, remove the earth around the gold dragon, steal the kings ring then return the magic and let the dragons do what they do. That would be the rampaging through the capital city of the humans mostly. Not ideal but it was what I had.
Removing the earth from around the ice dragon was tedious, doing it without drawing the attention of guards whose sole job was noticing that very thing was tricky. Where this had been accomplished in less than an hour before, this time it took days. It that time I learned more from the ice dragon but no matter what I tried she wouldn’t ever give me her name. She was odd in that way, I understood her in many ways but not giving me a name stood out as odd.
Finally after a week of subtly shifting the earth around that was done, now I needed to find the ring. The queen had come to the dragon while I worked one day and I could feel the ring she wore but I noticed something. It constantly pulled on her power, limiting her magic. The one I had didn’t do that to me, I couldn’t understand the difference until Badb again supplied the answer.
“You keep forgetting you’re not one of them.” Was all he said over dinner laughing at me. “You’re not human, more specifically your soul is that of a dragon. Not just a dragon either, but a dragon king.”
“Oh, that’s the difference.” Was my dumbfounded response. I really hadn’t thought about that
“There is a part of you that carries that authority with you, the dragons can feel it when you’re near them. It’s why the ice dragon won’t tell you her name, fear.” He laughed at my confusion.
“How could she fear me? She’s almost an ancient dragon!”
“And you’re a half elf walking around with the soul of a dragon king.” At this point he was laughing so hard he almost fell off his perch. “And that’s not mentioning the other parts!”
“Wait can people sense them?” I had to ask, there hadn’t been any indications that they could but you never know.
“They feel an innate fear, but don’t know why they feel it. The people of this domain have long ago forgotten about bloodlines.” Badb had finally gotten his amusement under control and his voice now had a tinge of sadness. “One of their core powers and it’s simply been erased from the history.”
“Why did that happen so you think?” It did make me curious, was it an oversight or something intentionally hidden?
“Not sure, my guess would be some process like the shards. Someone trying to control power, slowly removing it from the commoners. Than those in the know kept getting fewer and fewer until it simply died with the last man unwilling to share his power.”
“That’s sadly accurate of how people would deal with the knowledge. Power horded by those who have it.” I sighed heavily, knowing the failures of humans in this domain. One and all no matter the race, they all seemed consumed by the desire for power and controlling who had it.
“The magic beasts are no better.” Badb admitted. “It’s the curse of greed, all sentients share it. Are you done stalling now?”
“That obvious?” I chuckled at him calling me out like that but he was right. I was stalling, something about dealing with the queen made me nervous.
“You know why you’re stressing about it don’t you?” He cocked he head at me the way his kind did when they were puzzling something out.
“Not really.” I admitted.
“The small part of you that is human feels her authority as a ruler.”
“That doesn’t make sense, the elf king didn’t make me feel like this.” The other races hadn’t felt like anything either but other than the gnomes posturing they hadn’t tried to exercise any authority over me.
“Two reasons, first your hmmmmm history with his race?” He said it carefully knowing I did have some issues with the elves. “Second the other kings have surrendered their authority to a degree to the humans.”
“They what?” That last bit shocked me.
“The authority to rule is partially based in their absolute belief in it. The other races have all given that over to the humans to a lesser degree because of the shards.”
“It’s a concept, not a true power.” I said the realization hitting me like a stone. The strangest thing was as soon as I understood it the oppressing force that I had felt slid off me like water.
“Better?” Badb asked, his humor echoing in my mind.
“Yeah let’s go see what this actually looks like.” I grinned mentally at my friend. “Maybe we can steal it without her knowing it’s gone.”
After he finished laughing at my ridiculous hope we set off, again weaving our way through the wards around the estate. Once inside I spread my magic sense out searching for the vault first. No sense leaving loot just laying around after all.
It was way to find now, the common wards used to block them being familiar to me. Before I broke in though I took time to study them more closely. I knew how to get through it but this time I wanted to alter the lock, that way if I didn’t have to kill the queen my looting habits wouldn’t alert her that something was wrong. What I was trying to do was admittedly a gamble but our previous conversation made me hope it would work.
If I could modify the lock to block her but still feel like the king could open it, she might believe that he had locked her out. This would create tension between them but also protect my horsing habits. I knew the kings signature was on every vault, all I had to do was find it and then remove the other permissions. It turned out to be easier than I thought and in no time it was done. No alarms, no way for anyone to know. After that looting the vault was trivial and sadly didn’t give me the ring I was looking for. It did give me more gold and gems with a few more magical trinkets.
Ring of mental fortress, this ring builds a mental fortress around your mind to protect you from mind attacks.
That one was more useful than most of the rest and went on immediately. There were a few others that held some interest but nothing I would use specifically. Once everything as stored I put the wards back in order and set about finding the next one. By this time I was nearing midnight and the estate was silent save for a few guards mindlessly walking their patrols.
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The only other vault I could feel was in the queens chambers and the wards were stronger there. Getting through them took a solid hour, I was still trying to be sneaky and was starting to get annoyed with it honestly. What I found in her room erased my annoyance, it had been worth every bit of aggravation. The queen sat in front of a mirror talking to the reflection of a man on the otherside.
“You think he’ll come for you first?” The man was asking.
“Of course and you knew that when you sent me here.” Her voice was filled with resentment as she spoke. “You’re hoping he’ll kill me finally letting you have that child you’ve been pursuing.”
“That not why I sent you.” He snapped back. “I sent you because you’re the only other than me with the authority to stop him.”
“You bank to highly on that authority.”
“You know I don’t, that’s why you have the ring as well. With only one ring we might be able to stop him by using them.”
“You truly think the rings can affect him?” Her voice radiated mistrust but the man wasn’t moved by it. If anything he seemed to have not noticed as he kept explaining.
“They must, why else would he have taken the one? He fears them.” His logic was weak even to me and the Queen wasn’t buying it.
“You don’t know that, you’re not even sure he kept the ring.” Her icy tone matched that of the dragon sleeping below.
“It’s my best guess, I’m relying on it as well.” The king, I now knew, said.
“If I die your sniveling bitch will die with me.” She spoke harshly with true venom. “I have people in place to take care of exactly that.”
“You cold bitch!” The kings patience fled him in an instant. “She has nothing to do with this.”
“That won’t save her.” She sneered. It made my heart warm to know the couple was already at each other’s throats. It would hopefully make my life easier. “That little whore will still be dead if anything happens to me.”
They argued back and forth but my attention was on other tasks. She wasn’t wearing the ring, I couldn’t tell if it was in the small safe but I had to check. I slipped back letting their petty bickering fall into the background while I worked. Slowly cracking the wards at the back of the safe. I had to admit their squabbles carried on far longer than I would have thought. Long enough for me to open the safe anyway. Once I got it open my heart sang with joy, the ring was there. Before I took it Badb’s voice spoke into my head.
“Duplicate it, leave her a copy of it.” His advice was good, I liked the idea.
Gathering power in my hand I created a physical duplicate of the ring, that part was easy. The tricky part was the magic, there was no way I could duplicate the dragon magic it held. What I could do was put a message spell paired with a drain enchantment. The message wasn’t for the queen though, it was for the ice dragon.
“Dear dragon queen, I have taking the tie ring to free your mate. Please play along with her commands so she doesn’t know it’s gone. Signed Syn.”
That was easy, the drain spell I made overly complex so the ring seemed to give off more magic than it held. It would pull her magic into a drain that was tied to me, it wouldn’t do much power wise for me but it would let me know when she used it. The spell was variable her intent would dictate how strong the drain was.
It wasn’t exact but it should fool her for a while, I admit this was a risk. Mostly I was betting on her arrogance and familiarity. She knew this magic and wouldn’t likely bother really looking at it so long as it did what she wanted. Admittedly that was a big hole in the idea but it was better than just taking the ring leaving nothing.
There wasn’t much else in the safe of interest but I did find a token that caught my attention. It was half of a life token, the other half would crack and fall apart if the one bound to it died. My mind played back their argument this must be how the assassin would know to kill the girl they fought about. Not a bad plan, the only flaw in these tokens was their simplicity. I took just a moment to duplicate it and then alter the binding. Now the token in the safe would destroy the one I had and I too her token, it might be to my advantage to break it while she still lived. How much would it throw off the kings footing if his mistress was suddenly killed? Or I could use it to protect her once I saw who it was.
Those to things done I set about replacing the wards I had moved. After I finished the trip back to the bolt hole was simple, I did stop by and warn the dragon about the message in the ring. Then it was back home for dinner and a good nights sleep before teleporting to the one under the kings castle.