Alisa did absolutely nothing to avoid Reen. She certainly didn’t try to find excuses to be anywhere but in his presence, and definitely didn’t run away every time Lia tried to get the three of them together.

No, she just had more important things to work on. Like investigating the weird rumors and whispers that seemed to follow her. That was why she sat with a different classmate every day, avoiding Lia’s attempts to make eye contact, and acting engrossed in the lives of people about whom she knew little and cared less.

At least Zen was around more these days. He seemed to have gotten over his wild freedom phase, though Alisa wasn’t sure if his new phase was any better. With Raxi firmly out of reach, he’d instead turned his affections toward the least likely dragon Alisa would ever have imagined: Francine’s massive grandus, Gold.

Gold had every bit of her mistress's haughtiness, and the fact that she was by now the size of a small cottage did nothing to curb her arrogance. Unlike Mirva, whose stocky and almost equine shape had never morphed into anything more elegant - Sadie’s browning looked rather like a thick-legged horse, or some kind of massive dog - Gold had grown into her initially mis-proportioned body with gazelle-like grace. For all her size, there was a sleekness to her that Alisa could grudgingly acknowledge even if she refused to admire it. Golden scales, a long neck and pointed head, two curved horns, deep wings, a long tail; she supposed she could see what Zen admired.

But did he really have to ignore Gold’s deep and glaring personality flaws in favor of superficial beauty?

Zen ignored her remonstrations, and insisted on showing off any time Francine and Gold were anywhere nearby, which only earned Alisa more taunting and embarrassment. Still, she refused to be anything but supportive in public. Zen may be an idiot, but he was hers to mock, not anyone else's.

On the fifth day of her definitely-not-avoiding-Reen plan, she sat down to lunch with Tia, one of her classmates who also seemed to be the target of strange looks and tense whispers. Today Tia sat with Anya and Zal, and glanced over at Alisa, questioning.

“Do you know what’s going on?” Alisa asked bluntly. She had lost a lot of her patience for social conventions since bonding Zen, for some reason.

“Hmm?” Tia asked, looking around. “No, just lunch.”

“No, I mean… why are people looking at us strangely?”

Tia froze, glancing at Anya, then back at Alisa. “You haven’t heard?” she whispered, eyes going wide. “Indencai is trying to expand into Leviir.”

It took a moment for the answer to fully make sense to Alisa. Indencai, an allied country that bordered both Renand and her homeland of Leviir along the east, was… trying to ‘expand’?

“What does that mean?” Alisa asked.

“For us?” Tia shrugged. “Not much. But Afai had to leave three days ago.”

“Afai?” Alisa asked. She knew the names of most people in her class, but Afai didn’t sound familiar.

“She was year 3,” Tia said, and Alisa shrugged. “With the little white silverback? Always drawing her spells backwards?”

Alisa frowned and shook her head. “I don’t remember her.”

“Well, she’s gone. The Traitor came to expel her himself. He didn’t give any explanation, but everyone knows it’s because of the tension between Indencai and Leviir. And a lot of people are taking this to mean that Renand is going to take Leviir’s side if it comes to a conflict.”

Conflict. Such a calm, reasonable, measured word. Conflict sounded like Alisa’s relationship with Francine, or what happened when Zen wanted to go flying and Alisa needed him to stay in class and listen to the rules for draconic conduct in social situations outside the academy. ‘Conflict’ was far too tame a word to describe what would happen if the treaties were broken and Leviir ended up on the wrong side of its larger neighbor’s armies.

“Will we have to fight?” Alisa asked quietly.

“Ask the Traitor next time he visits,” Tia said, her tone a clear dismissal, and Alisa nodded and let the conversation drop.

She tuned out the conversation as it slid by into other topics, barely noticed what she was eating, mechanically putting food into her mouth while her mind raced off to the staggering implications.

No wonder everyone had been staring. There weren’t a huge number of students from Leviir, and usually your home country didn’t matter around here with the central trade pact and everything. But if they were about to be invaded? That would fuel gossip for a long time.

Her plans to get away as soon as possible and never come back had suddenly lost their luster.

She’d assumed her home would still be there, her mother safe, her world unchanged. She’d assumed the Traitor was warmongering and overreaching. But… what if he’d just been observant? What if he’d seen the signs before anyone else, realized that there was a conflict coming that they couldn’t get out of, and took drastic measures to ensure Renand survived? And Leviir along with it.

For several days after this revelation she could think of nothing else. She paid closer attention to the rumors, went out into the city to read news and spent more time around her fellow classmates than she had since before Zen hatched.

And she began to build up an idea of the political situation which she’d for so long ignored. Leviir tended to keep to itself, and she’d not ever given much thought to its neighbors beyond the fact that they existed and were sometimes traded with.

Indencai's demands, most agreed, were a direct reaction against Renand's growing power. Indencai wanted to ally with Leviir - or, more specifically, merge Leviir into Indencai - as a vague precaution against an imbalance of power.

There were other specifics of the whole complicated situation, old promises and grudges and envy and everything between, but the short of it was that Renand's sudden power shift was making everyone around them uncomfortable. Leviir reacted by quietly going about its business and assuming things would settle; Indencai by aggressively approaching its neighbors about unity - and if whispers were to be believed, perhaps forcing participation if those approached were unwilling to align themselves as quickly as Indencai wanted.

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Aside from Renand itself, Breih would have the most to lose if Indencai annexed Leviir, as it currently shared no borders with the aggressive nation, but bordered Leviir on the northwestern edge. Breih’s official reaction had yet to filter down through the gossip channels.

Lrend, to the north of Leviir, clearly seemed to think that if Leviir fell it could weasel some of its northern territories for itself if it sided with the aggressors. And with a larger, stronger Indencai between Lrend and Renand, it would be safe from retribution.

By every indication, in the next year or two the argument would come to a direct conflict, though the logic behind it evaded Alisa entirely. Why would Indencai invade Leviir over Renand existing? The central countries had all been allied for long enough that it seemed foolish to risk that peace over anything so trivial as a power shift.

Alisa didn't want to get involved in the squabble Indencai seemed intent on initiating with Renand, and she knew the rest of Leviir would be of similar mind. But Leviir was smaller than either of the other two countries - if not by land, certainly by population - and she wasn’t confident they’d have much say in the matter.

Renand was one of the most populous countries in the region, its cities massive sprawling things that put even Leviir's capitol to shame. Or so Alisa had heard. She'd never actually traveled outside her hometown until coming to Renand, so she couldn't personally compare.

It was hard to imagine anything so huge as this existing in Leviir. She always associated her homeland with the close openness of a small town, the open wild of the moors beyond, the constant flow of raw materials in and out, the scent of baking clay and smoke of the ovens. Not every town would be the same, she knew, but Renand had a distinct feel to it. But then, she was also right here in the heart of it.

True, Renand was taking all the best students of magic and turning them into living weapons. True, Renand had bought every dragon egg available on the open market and induced them all to hatch near simultaneously. She'd been forcefully torn from her intended future path and thrown onto a new one, and while it had taken her time to adapt to it she could see how from an outside view it would look worse than it was.

The more she thought about it, the less good it sounded. Hadn't she assumed they were going to be used as an invading force herself? What other reason could there be for fielding such a huge force of dragon mages, and at such insane expense? If the profit of having them didn't outweigh the inherent cost of gathering them, and reshaping the city around the academy's insane expansion, then why go to the trouble?

If it were preemptive, it seemed to have only hastened the coming conflict rather than alleviating it. The Traitor might be intending to come to Leviir's aid, but that was no excuse for the actions he'd taken in the past. It was easy to forget just how violent and bloody his rise to power had been, when it happened so fast and so quietly. There was no hubbub, no furor, just the few weeks of chaos as their lives were rearranged.

Why had no one protested? If Alisa were the parent of a student at the academy, learning that they were all going to be recruited as fighters for a foreign power? She would never have tolerated it. She was surprised so few parents had pulled their children out. Renand Grand Academy had a great reputation, true, but would even that be enough to make up for this?

Yet after the initial exit of that handful in the immediate aftermath, no one else had left.

She probably shouldn't spend so much time worrying about country level politics, when she had no way of impacting the outcomes. But she couldn’t stop herself. Now that she knew what was happening, it felt like a betrayal not to learn as much as possible. To try to work out a solution, even if she had no way of translating that solution to reality.

She wasn’t a fighter, wasn’t a killer, and she never wanted to become one. More importantly, she never wanted Zen to be put into that situation. She wanted him to live without burden. His presence may have ruined her life’s ambitions, but she didn’t have to let her presence destroy his future too. One of them being miserable was enough.

More than enough. They didn’t owe the Traitor anything. She didn’t owe Renand anything.

But Leviir was a different matter. If Indencai was planning to invade, if they were making demands and planning to force their way in? Leviir was a poor country, on a global scale. Alisa didn’t know their primary exports, but they weren’t the sorts of things that couldn’t be gotten elsewhere. She knew that her hometown exported bricks in great quantity, but had never really considered the state of the country overall. Her education had been patchy, with her full attention focused on mastering powerscript, the one skill she had determined to make her fortune with.

She could continue to run, refuse to accept the task given to her, take the out that Tay had offered. Or she could give up on her own dreams and accept that the survival of her homeland was more important right now. Even at the risk of her life.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t make that decision.”

How could she abandon her people, her family, everyone she’d ever known? If she left them to face the Indencai invasion, if they failed because she wasn’t there to protect them? Could she live with herself?

Fight or run. Either decision would cost her a piece of herself, a sacrifice she couldn’t bring herself to make. She felt herself tearing up and fought back the urge to cry. She had to be strong, had to consider this reasonably.

“What should we do, Zen?” she pleaded. It was too big a decision for her to make, she needed someone outside herself to choose for her, and Zen was the only one she trusted enough. “Please, tell me what we should do.”

Even though she knew it was foolish to give a baby dragon this kind of choice, so far he’d made good decisions. His insistence on waiting for the bond, finding Tay, discovering the hidden room. Zen was incredibly smart and had a way of making things better without seeming effort.

Zen considered for a very long time before answering. ‘Leviir is in danger? Immediate danger?’

“Yes, it is in danger. Perhaps not immediate, but from the rumors…”

'Then we go help them.’

“So we stay here, train to fight, and then one day—“

But Zen was shaking his head, flying in agitated loops. ‘No. Tay will get us out. We go to protect your people.’

“You… want us to run away, and go fight? Untrained, alone?”

‘The thought of remaining here causes you distress. The thought of abandoning your home causes you distress. So do not remain here and do not abandon your home.’

Alisa smiled at his simplistic view, but… the more she thought about it… he wasn’t actually wrong. “You think we can do enough to matter?”

Zen drew himself up indignantly in midair, his four wings flapping madly to keep him perfectly hovering in place. He was longer than she was tall now, only his incredible muscle control keeping his long sinuous body coiled in midair without letting his tail drag on the ground.

’I know we can. I know we will. And if you ever get in too much trouble, make the door and we’ll come back here.’

Alisa hadn’t considered that. She’d somehow only considered the doorway spell in its current state as relevant due to its connection with the cavern underneath the academy, but Zen had a good point. It provided her a solid emergency escape from any dangerous situation. One-way, and without a guarantee that the danger wouldn’t follow them, but it was a start. It would be even better if she could figure out how to target arbitrary locations instead of just the two, but the two powerscripts were too different to draw any sort of proper comparisons between. There seemed to be no connection between the location data for the two doorways she could make, and without anything else to cross-reference their usage was extremely limited.

But it could be used to retreat. And it could be used to evacuate others, if it came down to that. The long-abandoned moss-filled cavern suddenly gained new prominence as a potential hideaway for refugees. She could fit dozens of people in there, possibly hundreds if only for a short time.

’We can fight for your land,’ Zen assured her. ’And it would be nice to see your mother.’

“It wouldn’t be nice to fight,” Alisa said faintly. “But, sometimes, there is no choice.”

’We could hide and wait. But we choose not to.’

“Yeah,” she said, her mounting tension beginning to ease, even as a deeper dread began to settle in her mind. “We’ll do it.”

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