July 8th, 875
Metirine Castle
Empire of Sedina
She sat there staring at the little dragon who was shaking and crying. He had started to ask something but it seemed like he couldn’t figure out how to ask it, but then he started to slowly break down and cry. She didn’t know that lizards could cry, maybe it was because he was a Silver Dragon and not a lizard? Either way, nothing in her training or combat experiences had taught her how to deal with a kid who seemed to be having a mental breakdown. Dying or traumatized soldiers sure but kids?
Hopefully this is just an episode and not a complete mental break. Ok, think, he was fine before. He was being tough… he was being tough. Shit, he’s a KID. He doesn’t know HOW to be tough. Kidnapping, torture, captivity, all these things can erode the mind. I don’t know how to handle this… Wait, maybe? It worked in the holovids… They were also Human… Worth a shot I guess? Ha… I miss the old days where I just had to worry about shooting people and staying alive… wait that makes me sound old… shit.
She reached out and slowly picked him up and held him to her armored chest. She reached up with a gloved hand and hesitantly stroked his head, trying to comfort him but not really knowing how. His words ‘I just want to go home’ stuck with her though.
He probably wanted to ask me to help him get home but was feeling guilty about asking me when I was the one dragged into this and don’t know anything.
She just kept stroking his head for a bit longer till he seemed to calm down. Then she put him back on the desk and took her helmet off and looked at him.
“You wanted to ask me to help you get home didn’t you?”
He nodded as he lowered his head and rubbed his eyes with his clawed hands.
“What is wrong with that?”
He raised his head to look at her. He just stared her in the eye, as if what she said confused him.
“It’s wrong”, he said. “It’s just wrong, you were brought here against your will. You don’t owe anyone here anything. You’re helping me because I know the way around and that helps your escape but that’s it. Once we get out of here you will leave me to go off to find a way home. You're strong, fast, armed, and armored. The only thing I have to offer is my knowledge of magic and the limited spells I can cast. I don’t have money to pay you and-”
“And that’s enough.” She said, interrupting him.
He stopped and looked at her confused.
“I know nothing of this place, much less about this world. I have never heard of magic, mana, dragons, or any of that. Going around being ignorant is more dangerous than being unarmed in enemy territory. You have the knowledge, I have the skill, so let's work together to get us both get out of here and get us both home.”
“You, you, you will help me?”
“Yes. If we work together, we can do what’s needed so that we both can get home.”
“Then I, um, I have an idea… It’s, um, something that might help us more long term but…”
“But there is a catch?” She asked.
“Yes. It’s a Spiritual Binding Contract. It is what is used to magically Bind spirits or magical creatures and an individual together. There are different versions of it but the one I would want to use is the Mutual Benefit one. It means that both the individual, you, and the magical creature, me, have to agree to it. The method to end it is very simple, if either is dissatisfied, then that one can end it.”
“I’m not hearing the catch.”
“It binds your spirit, your soul to this contract. You will gain a benefit of some kind from me and I from you, but we will both be able to sense and feel the other. So you will know where I am and I will know where you are. However, this means that if something were to happen one then the other would feel it. The worse the thing is, the more it’s felt by the other. This applies to injuries and in rare cases even death.”
“Doesn’t sound that bad. If one of us gets seriously hurt we can just cut off the connection to save the other the pain. Is that the only catch?”
“No, it requires a magical ritual and specialized components to complete the ritual. Fortunately, all that we will need and maybe some extras can be found here.” He said as he waved a clawed arm out gesturing to the lab.
“Lucky us then. I had just planned to come here to grab his research to see if that could be used to get me home and then destroy the rest. Tell me what we will need and what is valuable that we could sell later. Also tell me where he keeps his research notes, I don’t want anything even remotely useful left behind when we are done. What we don’t take we destroy.” She stated as she took her bag off and set it on the ground. She reached inside and pulled out the display and set it on the table next to the dragon, then grabbed the second bag from inside the first.
“First the stuff for the ritual thing, then research notes, then useful and then sellable. The rest we burn. The fire will cause a distraction and cause more confusion. Especially since they have probably found the bodies by now or at least they will very soon.”
----------------------------------------
Heide paused as she studied her handiwork. To just about everyone it would probably look like someone had ransacked the room and then tore everything apart and piled in haphazardly on the floor. Well that opinion wouldn’t be completely wrong but the pile wasn’t haphazard. She had taken the bookshelves and laid them on the floor along with the tables which she flipped upside down. Then she spread all the scrolls, papers, what seemed like dried body parts, and strange substances that she couldn’t identify (and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know based on the body parts) over the bookshelves and tables. She had even cut up the chairs and table legs and piled them in various places. Those who understood how to burn things would get it though. A single large pile takes longer to burn the whole thing but if you spread it out, it can burn faster. She cared more for having it burn fast than a sustained burn. The hard wood of the bookshelves and the tables would sustain while the papers and scrolls would work to accelerate the burn. Well those and the things that the Silver Dragon told her were highly flammable, those she used like she would an accelerant.
She moved over to the small pile of small boxes that she hadn’t gone through yet. As she opened each, she got more and more confused. The contents were nothing but strange looking crystals. Each box had crystals of different colors, 5 different colors in total. These were the only items that were placed in boxes such as these so they had to have some value but they didn’t look like data crystals or anything like that. Nor were they cut and polished like gems, more rough looking. The other part that confused her is that her armor’s sensors were detecting faint energy signatures from each of them. The signatures were so faint that they were only detected when she focused on them… or maybe it was because of the boxes?
She closed one of the boxes while focusing on it and watched as the energy signature disappeared. Somehow the box blocked it and prevented detection. She started to examine the box as wood doesn’t block energy signatures, at least not any type of wood that she knew of.
It wasn’t until she checked the lining on the inside that she found it. A thin sheet of metal of some kind was between the wood and the felt that lined the inside of the box. If not for the magnification her helmet provided and her claws, she might not have found it. The boxes alone should be worth something. What the colored crystals that radiated energy might be worth, she didn’t have a clue. They didn’t seem to be radioactive but she didn't have an extensive database for identifying energy signatures and radiation types. She only had the more active common signatures and types that one would encounter in Terran and Imperial space on file. The only reason her implant had known what the dimensional rift was, was because she had been connected to the base’s network at the time.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
She looked over at the Silver Dragon and thought of asking him but he seemed focused on mixing… something. He had told her specific things he needed for the contract, all of which he ended up having to describe as she didn’t know the names of any of these things. She did file the information away for possible use later. She also took note of the names of the ones that he told her to keep because they were valuable and they might be able to sell whenever they got to a town. Granted they would have to find and get to a town first but it’s better to plan for the future than to leave things completely to chance.
She decided to set the boxes with colored crystals aside for now so that the Silver Dragon could figure them out once he was done with the preparations for the Contract. Why he needed such things or they had to go through this weird process, she didn’t know. He had said something about the ritual for the contract would allow for the magic to establish a connection between them. The only thing she could figure out is that it was similar to when you had to go through a process to set up a secure connection between 2 different systems so that data and communications could be transmitted back and forth between them.
Then she heard him call out; “It’s ready.”
She grabbed one of the boxes and walked over to him.
“I got everything that we are not taking or using set up to burn, all we have to do is ignite it. With the exception of this box and a few others like it that I found. The boxes have a thin lining of metal that seems to block the small energy signature that these strange crystals are emitting”, she said as she opened the one in her hand and showed him.
“Mana Crystals! I didn’t know he had these. Normally I would be able to sense the magic in them but the lining that you mentioned must be blocking it. Wait… you said they are emitting an… energy signature?”
She nodded and tapped her helmet, “yes, the sensors in my armor detected that the crystals are emitting a faint and unknown energy signature. Not something that I have ever encountered before and I only noticed it because I was focusing on the crystals trying to find out what they were.”
“I think your… sensors you called them? Your sensors in your helmet are somehow detecting the raw mana in these crystals.”
“What are these crystals and what do you mean by raw mana?”
“Mana crystals are condensed and crystalized mana. Mana is what allows magic to work and is everywhere. There are some places where mana is denser and some places where there is less. Mana is something that also occurs in all living things to some extent. Some beings have a larger amount of mana that their bodies generate and some have less. You can also train and enhance your mana, similar to the way one can train their body but there are limits. Mana has multiple types: fire, water, earth, air, light, dark, and, the most common, attributeless or neutral. Mana crystals are formed over time in places with high concentrations of mana or formed in magical beings.”
“Since the crystals in this box are red, that means they are fire mana crystals. What colors are the others?”
“There were also blue, green, brown and white.”
“Those would be water, air, earth and attributeless in the order that you stated. Actually if we could use one of those attributeless ones for this, it could make things easier. That way we use the mana from the crystal instead to help power the magic instead of taking everything from ourselves. Especially if we are going to have to fight our way out of this place.”
Heidi nodded and walked back to the boxes and placed the one she was carrying down and opened the one containing the white crystals and took one of them, making sure to close the box before she went back over to Silver Dragon.
As she handed it to him she asked, “So what do we need to do for this contract to work?”
“Doing the ritual is fairly simple, preparing it is generally harder since the more preparation and better materials you use, the better the end result will be. Lucky for us, everything we needed and more was already here. As for how to establish the contract, we will need to recite some predetermined lines, state our names and the magics involved will do the rest.”
“That’s it? Just speak some lines, include our names and that’s it? Seems too simple, why don’t more people do it?”
“The reason for that is two fold, first in because of the components needed for the ritual and secondly you have to get a magical being to voluntarily agree. If they don’t want to join in the contract then the contract will automatically fail.”
“I take it that getting a magical being, whatever that is, to willingly agree is difficult?” Heidi asked as she looked at the design that the Silver Dragon had made using the things that she had gathered and he had ground and mixed together.
“It can be yes. Most are suspicious and distrustful of humans, however if a human were to demonstrate good character or behave in a manner that is in line with the magical being’s nature then said human might gain favor with the magical being. As for what needs to be said, I can tell it to you. I won’t state my actual name when telling you the wording because I don’t want to trigger the ritual.”
“I, my name, do hereby bind myself to Komodo as an equal. We shall walk and share as one, we will each benefit from all as we journey through life. We shall share the ill with the well. We shall do this until such time as the bond is broken or fate tears us apart. Let the gods and the world itself bear witness to this oath. Let our mana, our aether be the bindings that tie us together. I, my name, do hereby bind myself to Komodo as an equal.”
“Well my name isn’t Komodo but that ritual is a little wordy but not that bad. Perhaps I should actually introduce myself…” She took her helmet off and offered her hand to the Silver Dragon. “I am Captain Heidi Kopfjäger of the United Terran Military Special Forces.”
The Silver Dragon placed his small clawed hand in hers and said. “I am Sildraxic. I don’t have any rank or titles, nor am I affiliated with any organization.”
“Well then Sildraxic, let’s get this ritual done so we can get out of here. We have spent enough time here that I have no doubt that the bodies have probably already been discovered and they are searching for us. Fortunately for us, they don’t seem to have considered the possibility that we would have actually gone deeper into the castle instead of immediately escaping. That being said, the longer we take the more security we will have to somehow get past. Hopefully we can sneak past them and not have to fight our way out”, she said as she walked over and gathered the small wood boxes containing the mana crystals and placed them in her bag and moved the bag over next to the door where she could grab it quickly on the way out.
She walked back over to Sildraxic and asked, “Ok, so other than speaking the words do we need to do anything else?”
“We need to stand at opposite sides and extend a hand inside the circle and then speak the words together. However once it is done there will be a pulse of magic and that might draw attention so we will need to leave quickly.”
“Already prepared, bags are stashed, burn pile prepared, the only thing left to do will be flip this table onto the pile and ignite the whole lot and then leave.”
Sildraxic nodded and gestured to a spot opposite of him, “let’s not waste time then.”
She moved to the indicated spot and extended her right hand over the circle and looked at him, when he nodded they began to speak together: “I Sildraxic/Heidi Kopfjäger do hereby bind myself to Heidi Kopfjäger/Sildraxic as an equal. We shall walk and share as one, we will each benefit from all as we journey through life. We shall share the ill with the well. We shall do this until such time as the bond is broken or fate tears us apart. Let the gods and the world itself bear witness to this oath. Let our mana, our aether be the bindings that tie us together. I Sildraxic/Heidi Kopfjäger do hereby bind myself to Heidi Kopfjäger/Sildraxic as an equal.”
As they began to speak the magic circle as Sildraxic referred to it, which just looked like a weird design to her, began to glow blue and halfway through turned gold. When they reached the end and spoke the final line, the circle flashed bright and instantly stopped glowing, as it had never glowed in the first place.
As the light from the floor faded an alarm from her implant went off.
"ALERT! Unknown Energy Detected Internally. Unknown Energy is spreading throughout the body. Please seek immediate medical attention as Unknown Energy could be harmful."
"ALERT! Unknown Energy is increasing. Please seek immediate medical attention as Unknown Energy could be harmful."
“Um, Sildraxic? Some kind of energy just started to appear inside me, is that the mana you were talking about and is it related to the ritual thing?
“Yes, normally we might not notice the changes immediately but it seems like you did. Sometimes the benefits are subtle and sometimes they are obvious. I have no idea what the benefits and changes you received are. Either way we should probably get moving, we might be able to figure it out later when we have time.” Following words with action, he hopped off the table and with a flap of his wings glided to her bag next to the door and started to climb inside.
Heidi in turn put on her helmet then grabbed the table and heaved it over onto the pile with the top facing down. Then she grabbed the small pile of sticks that she had prepared, each stick was covered on one end with a substance that she was told was highly flammable. She drew her plasma knife and activated it just long enough to run it across the tips of the sticks, the plasma igniting them all. She quickly sheathed the knife and began tossing each stick to a prepared ignition point, all of which then ignited in a burst of fire and quickly spread turning the whole massive pile into a bonfire. She turned and rushed to the door, quickly slinging her bag and rifle and throwing her cloak over all of it before opening the door and stepping out.
Outside she quickly glanced around finding no one, she closed the door and started back toward the illusionary wall.