***** Wilde Jägur’s POV, 11:30 PM*****

          “Good work Apple! I think that’s all the major problems for now.”

          “Thanks, Hopper! My pets and I could use a break,” I replied.

          “Let’s see, today you and your pets dealt with three different high-powered poachers, a group of illegal lumberjacks, an enraged brontosaurus, the plants that enraged said brontosaurus, and assisted with twenty other minor incidents along the way, for a total distance of just over 20,000 km ping-ponging around the entire rainforest. Crikey mate, that’s a lot even for you! You are one hard-working sheila!” said Salomon, my dispatch operator. It was his job to monitor the emergency channels and coordinate with the rest of the Amazon Emergency Services, ensuring that I was helping out where I was needed most.

          I call him Hopper because he is a were-kangaroo and a caffeine addict that is almost incapable of sitting completely still. Over the eight years that I have known him, there are only two times that I’ve ever seen him sit still. The first was the day he fell asleep during our morning planning session because someone had given him decaf coffee. The second was when he was trying to hide from me after he somehow managed to superglue me to my chair. I’m still not entirely sure how he managed to hide the smell of the glue from me, the rotten sneak. My response was to beam him in the head with an apple or three, which is why he calls me Apples. When he glared at me, I told him that we were even and the next time he pranked me I’d use coconuts. He wisely decided that pranking me was a bad idea.

          “Besides, your replacements clocked in two hours ago. Feel free to call it quits for the night,” he continued, snapping me out of my reverie.

          “Shall we go to the house?” I asked my pets, stretching my arms above my head.

          “Murr!” said Stephano, the leader of my Utahraptor pack, as he headbutted my right shoulder.

          “Groarrr,” agreed Borkson, my male triceratops, gently nipping my other shoulder.

          At least that is what everyone else would have heard them say. I, on the other hand, heard, “Hungry!” and “Sleep,” because they are my pets and I am their tamer. We can also talk to each other entirely with telepathy, but that requires enough effort that we only use it when necessary. Most of them weren’t all that talkative and tended to stick to one- or two-word sentences, though they could use more on occasion. Kind of like parrots really, though they were a lot less likely to spam the same words and phrases over and over again unless they needed something. Some of my monkeys could manage full sentences, as could some of the velociraptors oddly enough. Then again, they are my scouts, so they have to be able to tell me what they saw. I could look through their eyes if I wanted to, but doing so tends to cause massive headaches for both of us if I use it too often and I can’t look through my own eyes at the same time. As such, I only use it in emergencies.

          The odd thing is that despite the effort required to send words or pictures, continuously sending basic status updates (i.e., health, location, general physical condition, and intent) took no effort at all.

          “Alrighty then, we are calling it quits for today and returning to the house. See you tomorrow Hopper!” I said as I telepathically informed all of my pets I had with me today of our new destination.

          “Roger that. Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite!”

          “If they bite I’ll bite them back!”

          “What kind of bed bug can bite a dragon? For that matter, what kind of bed bug would be big enough for you to bite?”

          “I don’t know. On second thought, I’d probably have my monkeys bite them for me.”

          “True.”

          “Anyway, I’m signing off now,” I said before ending the connection.

          With that out of the way, I double-checked that all of my pets were ready to move, then called to the forest with my magic to speed our travels. A moment later, the forest responded, and reality bent in front of us making every step we took cover several kilometers. Unsurprisingly, it took us a matter of minutes to travel the 250-ish kilometers to the house my parents had sold to me and my pets.

          I wish I could have said that it was my house, but even saying that it was my house would cause my magic to try and claim it as my territory, taking it away from Mama and Papa. Not that they’d fight me for it once they realized it was me trying to claim it, but that was part of the problem. It would be territory that had been given to me rather than a territory that I had earned on my own, a hollow victory at best. On top of that, I had lived my entire life inside my parents’ shadows. Having them simply give me territory didn’t sit right with me. On some level it would mean giving up on ever making a name for myself, leaving me an empty shell of who I could be.

          That is not to say that I hadn’t claimed anything for my own. I am a dragon, I have to claim something just to stay alive.

          All living things require at least some mana to function properly, it’s just part of being alive, which led to the term “manabolism,” or the magical portion of a metabolism. The Seal had been supplying the required mana up until roughly seventy years ago when it started to release. At birth, this power is provided by our parents, just like everything else we need to survive the early years of our lives. That is simply the way childhood works no matter what you are. Admittedly, it is still possible to survive as an orphan living alone on the streets, it is just much harder to do so.

          As we grow, the amount of magic we need to survive also increases, increasing the power drawn from our parents to a certain extent. However, as we grow and mature mentally and physically, the magic we generate simply by being a living sentient being increases. Our human selves don’t need all that much magic for their manabolism, so our naturally generated magic is usually sufficient for our human self by the time we stop breastfeeding.

          For those who only have bloodlines from human magic users, this will usually be more than enough to survive for the rest of their lives if they don’t use their magic. If they do use their magic, then they are forced to gather mana just like everybody else. How exactly we gather our mana depends on what magical bloodlines we have as every bloodline has unique ways to gather magic.

          As we grow up and start to act on our own accord, our ability to collect magic grows as well. Exactly how much it grows depends on which bloodlines we pulled out of the genetic lottery and the way said bloodlines gather power. Some bloodlines will have tangible effects for even the most half-hearted token efforts at gathering mana, but having more success in gathering mana for this sort of bloodline will usually give more of an effect.

          Other bloodlines demand that we go all out to get any effect at all, but the more mana a bloodline requires the more of an effect it will have.

          I would call it a benefit rather than an effect, but every bloodline comes with a price that must be paid sooner or later. Many prices are obvious, such as ridiculous levels of self-control from too much power or water allergies from too much fire affinity, but some of them…

          Some of them will blind you to their very existence even as they twist you into someone you never thought you would be, or someone you never would have become if you had your eyes open.

          For dragons, specifically, those that follow the Path of Light like me and my family, our mana collection is based on what we have claimed as our own and how much we improve our territory after we claim it. There are other factors, such as the nature of what we have claimed, the initial quality, and the strength of our claim and many others, but those can get rather complicated very quickly.

          My father summarized it the best when he said, “Those of us who follow the Path of Light are intended to nurture, to build, to guard, to guide and to protect what is ours.”

          Fortunately for me, I’m not just a dragon. I’m also a Beast Tamer and a Jungle Fae, so instead of claiming territory, I claimed my pets. I know that this isn’t healthy for me in the long run, but my dragon self still has another twenty years or so before she hits adulthood. In other words, I have at least another decade before I have to claim territory.

          I could claim territory now, but I have not yet found somewhere that feels right to me. Somewhere that I am needed, where I have the freedom to be me outside of my parents’ shadows. There was something else I know that I’m missing, another thing I should be looking for in a territory, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is.

          In the meantime, I’m making do by using my pets for the power storage and collection that I’d normally get from claiming territory. It isn’t perfect, but it should work long enough for me to find some territory to claim.

          It also has some useful side effects. Most of my pets have gained the ability to harness the various aspects of my power in their own unique ways. These aspects are air, fire, and earth from my dragon self, and glamor from my Fae self. The Utah raptors tended towards air and fire magic, giving them a ridiculous speed boost and extending the reach of their claws. My velociraptors and monkeys tended to get glamor, allowing them to hide in the jungle without slowing down. The velociraptors also used the glamor to sharpen their claws somehow, while the monkeys used it to do a wide variety of useful tricks. Borkson could cover himself in several inches of stone before charging into battle, making it an even worse idea to attack him head-on. Amelia, my female triceratops and Borkson’s mate, somehow managed to get healing magic. I think healing was something she could do even before I had claimed her, my power just gave her a strength and range boost.

          Then there was my sloth, Pokey. He was my first beasty and one of the few that had been mine for his entire life, both of which gave him a tremendous power boost compared to the others. He was also my most dangerous beasty because he was the only one who had mastered the inside-out and upside-down logic that Papa used for his glamor-based shenanigans. Admittedly, Pokey wasn’t anywhere near as dangerous as Papa, especially on his own. Pokey only had a few variations of one trick, as opposed to Papa’s several dozen tricks and an untold number of variations.

          Besides, Pokey is still a sloth. He simply cannot be dangerous on his own. However, when he was supporting others who knew how to work with him, he was far more dangerous than any of my other pets.

          When we got to the house, my pets all went to their armament and hygiene stations which removed the various pieces of combat gear and bathed them before dinner. I still fed them all myself, that was too important to leave to a machine. Besides, feeding them just doesn’t take anywhere near as long as equipping and unequipping all of their gear.

          A little over an hour later, everyone had eaten, and we were all retreating to our various beds for some well-deserved rest when I got interrupted by Pokey.

          “Lonely!” he squeaked at me, “Sleep hug?”

          “Oh, all right. You can sleep next to me tonight,” I said as I picked him up.

          “Me too!” added Banana Face, a white-faced capuchin and one of my smarter monkeys, as he scrambled up onto my shoulder. I suppressed a smile at his name, which he adamantly refused to change.

          With my two primates on board, I yawned hugely and started stumbling down the hallway towards my bedroom. I was stumbling worse than I thought because both of my passengers decided to use their glamor to hide in my hair rather than risk getting flattened if I fell over. Since the glamor was inherently a part of me, hiding like this took almost no power to set up and maintain so they could hide in there almost indefinitely.

          Then most of my pets fell asleep at almost the same time.

          I know they were tired, but I didn’t think they were this tired. I thought to myself. Why even the pets that didn’t come with me are falling asleep! But they’ve been resting all day…

          Something’s wrong. I realized as my dragon-self took a deep breath through my human nose in preparation for combat. Except instead of amping me up like it normally would, I just felt sleepier.

          So sleepy in fact that I tripped and fell flat on my face.

          Then I started paying attention to what my nose had been trying to tell me: someone had filled the house with sleeping gas. I knew it was far too late for me to try and resist it, not if I’d already inhaled enough to faceplant like this.

          The only thing I could do was reinforce the glamor that hid my primary smart wrist bag and pray that my pets would be fine.

          As I was praying, I made an effort to try and hide my decoy smart wrist bag, but I knew that it wouldn’t hold up to any sort of close inspection. Which was fine, I wanted them to think I had tried to hide it.

          Is this what happened to Hai Lung? I wondered as the world faded away.

*****

          I woke up to the sound of two different people arguing loudly somewhere in front of me. I don’t particularly care at the moment, I just want to drift away again.

          Alas, it was not to be and the drugs continued to wear off.

          Eventually, I realized that it was a young man and a young woman doing the arguing, and another while before I realized they were arguing in English.

          Then the tone of the argument suddenly became much more heated and my survival instinct started fighting its way through the drug-induced fog and tell me to wake up faster. Deciding that listening to my instinct was a good idea, I called on my dragon’s metabolism and burned the rest of the fog out of my head.

          “Why did you even think kidnapping her was a good idea? You should have told our parents about this!” said the woman.

          “But that would get me kicked out of–” replied the man.

          “Why are you even trying to join those pure-mage-only idiots, you numbskull!”

          “I’m not a numbskull!”

          “Yes, you are! You–”

          “No, I’m not! I can prove it!” said the man as he started running towards me.

          “What are you talking about!?” demanded the woman as she ran after him a heartbeat later.

          I decided that this would be a good time to open my eyes and look up, so I did. In the process, I discovered that I was securely fastened to a large tree and gaged, presumably to prevent me from using my dragon’s breath.

          Focusing on the man running towards me, I noticed there was something vaguely ponderous about the way he was moving. Since he was still moving at normal speeds despite this ponderousness, he is probably a troll of some sort. When he reared his head back as if he was going to headbutt me with the weight of his entire body behind it, I braced for impact accordingly and closed my eyes.

          bonk whump, Thud!

          When nothing else happened for a few moments except the woman’s footsteps skidding to a stop a few feet away, I cautiously opened my eyes to find the numbskull laying in a heap at my feet.

          I looked up at the woman and she looked up at me, then we both looked back at the numbskull on the floor.

          “What just happened?” she asked as she checked Numbskull’s pulse. “Did he think he could prove he wasn't a numbskull by headbutting you into unconsciousness or something?”

          I shrugged and grunted at her around the gag in my mouth.

          “Oh, right. One moment,” she said as she pulled out a communication device of some kind and started speaking in what sounded like Russian, so I didn’t understand any of it.

          An older male voice interrupted her sharply, also in Russian unfortunately, asking a question.

          The woman replied with what I assumed to be a general description of me based on the way the woman was looking me up and down.

          While she was talking, I quickly took stock of my situation. There were three ropes around my entire body, one just above my knees, one at my waist, and another around my chest just under my armpits. There was another set of ropes around each wrist holding my arms wrapped around the tree behind me. The final set of ropes was around my ankles to pin my feet in place.

          I was not impressed. The rope was four-centimeter diameter hemp with no enhancing enchantments, and there was nothing to prevent me from flipping my hands around and digging my claws into it. Even if they had, hemp isn't strong enough to hold a dragon in such a small quantity. On top of that, they used a gag rather than a muzzle and there was nothing to hold my head in place. A proper enchanted muzzle would prevent me from even pulling my lips back from my teeth, preventing me from using my dragon's breath. A gag doesn't do that. Sure, it would significantly limit my accurate range, but I could still burn off the ropes without much difficulty. In doing so, the gag itself was going to get burned away. I could also chew through the gag in fairly short order, leaving my breath unhindered.

          Fortunately, I have enough Fae blood to use glamor to create my clothes, so my fire breath wouldn’t burn them off of me. Not only did this save my parents a fortune on my clothing, as dragons tend to be hard on everything around them even when they’re trying to be gentle, but it meant that I can switch outfits whenever I feel like it. It’s a pity that I’ve never gotten it to work for any of my pets.

          At this point, I’d had the glamor running for so long that it was practically a part of my manabolism, and the only time it has ever failed on me was when I almost killed myself overusing my magic, and even then, it came back up as soon as my magic stabilized about five minutes later.

          Despite the hilariously flimsy restraints, which stood no chance of holding my Fae-self, a sort of humanoid jaguar thing, I didn’t escape just yet, as I wanted to see how this would play out.

          Since inspecting the supposed restraints only took me a couple of seconds and she was still talking to the old man in Russian, I mentally checked in on my pets. Banana Face and Pokey were fine, they’d climbed out of my hair and wandered off into the forest to find food. Presumably, my kidnappers had dosed me with another sedative to keep me out but missed my monkeys because they were still hiding. I let Pokey continue to forage since he is a slowpoke, but I called Banana Face back to me so that I at least had some backup. My connections to the rest of my pets were suppressed for some reason as if something was jamming them and limiting my manabolism’s ability to access the power I had stored in them. This explained why I was hungry enough to eat an elephant or two. I made a mental note to go hunting soon, as if my stomach would let me forget to do so, and another one to check into the source of the jamming later, preferably when I didn’t have an audience.

          Out of habit, I also checked on my connection to my boyfriend, Hai Lung. To my surprise, I felt something different for the first time in months. Instead of the almost empty void that only told me my boyfriend was still alive, I could tell that he was somewhere nearby. There was still something interfering with it, but that was far better than it had been. It wasn’t the jamming that I was getting from my pets, which felt a lot like radio static. No, this felt more like something was preventing him from acknowledging our relationship properly.

          There was a small, irrational, part of me that was afraid this meant he was cheating on me. However, that would be a significant violation of both his territory and mine. A territory violation of that magnitude is every bit as hard to hide as his death would be. In fact, it would probably be easier to hide a nuke going off just over the horizon than hide either violation.

          I’m coming for you, my Dragon from the Sea. I thought to him.

          I’ll be waiting for you Māo Māo. I wish this man would let me scratch my neck. he replied, sending me a picture of the man standing next to him highlighting something on the man’s belt.

          This set off some alarm bells in my head as Hai was not one to complain about minor things like having an itchy neck. No, he’d either solve the problem if he could or suffer in silence if he couldn’t. If he’s complaining about an itchy neck in the same breath that he’s greeting me after disappearing six months ago, he’s either trying to tell me something that he can’t even in the privacy of our dating bond, or he's struggling to control his temper. In this case, I'm betting it's both.

          Where are you?

          Just let the lady escort you to the meeting and help them with their ignorance. Yes, I do have an itch that I cannot scratch, but there is only one person here that has anything to do with my itch, and he has far too much pride to let you destroy his little kingdom with facts and logic.

          So you're saying just be me and he'll come after me?

          A clever Māo like you shouldn’t have any issues. I’ll see you when you get here, I’ve stretched my orders as far as I dare for today.

          Then he let go of the connection and all I got was the fog of extreme exhaustion.

          Great. I finally get to talk to him for the first time in months, and he's so tired he's speaking in riddles. At least he's telling me to go hunting. Politely.

          After all, I am Wilde Jägur. Wild Hunter.

          With a goal in mind, I turned my attention back to the Russian conversation in front of me. No sooner had I done so than the older man switched to heavily, and rather oddly, accented English. “Let me talk to her.”

          “Are you sure daddy? They’ve trussed her up quite well.”

          “Ja man, I’m sure.”

          Before she could respond some indistinct yelling came out of the device as if someone several feet away from the microphone were yelling in its general direction.

          “Shut up before I put all of y’all on latrine duty for a week!” yelled the older man, resulting in instant silence.

          Meanwhile, the young woman in front of me pulled a shadow knife and very carefully cut my gag off.

          The pieces started falling into place, and I realized who the older man must be, and by extension, the young woman in front of me. If they were who I thought they were, then I could trust them for now. At the very least, their honor means it's safe enough to play along until I figure out what Hai Lung is talking about.

          It would also mean that, unless this group of shadow mages had gotten truly desperate, the people who kidnapped me were a rogue faction making a power play. Even then, based on my parent's stories about Dominik Alexeev, I cannot see him ever agreeing to kidnap someone now that he's in charge.

          Then the young woman held the device up to me. “Alright Daddy, you’re on.”

          “Who are you?” he asked.

          “I am Wilde Jägur, daughter of Ulysses and Anabela DeSoto. You are Dominik Alexeev I presume?”

          “...Yes. How did you know?”

          “Between the shadow magic, the Russian and your… unique English accent, it wasn’t that hard to figure out.”

          “Ja man, learning English from Jamaicans in Texas will do that to any Russian. Did your parents tell you of the time your mother and I killed the strongest troll in the world?”

          “Well, you tried to kill her,” I corrected him. “Fortunately for the rest of the world, mi Tia was already far harder to kill than anyone, including her, truly understood.”

          “You can say that again!” He snorted. “Do you have any idea what it's like to have someone offer you some chicharrones with your dagger still in her heart?”

          “No, but given that Aunt Frida was involved, I'm more surprised that the handle stayed attached to the blade. Her body temperature should have melted the blade immediately.”

          “Oh, it did. Eventually. Keep in mind that this was in the early days of magic's return, so she wasn't anywhere near as strong as she is today.”

          “True. Aunt Frida occasionally rants about how much she hates those who sent you that day because of all the emotional trauma Momma went through that day.”

          “Considering how close they were before that day, I don't doubt it. Sasha, cut her loose, tend her wounds, and make for darn sure that she's well-fed, then bring her here. Her knowledge of that story, especially how traumatic as it was for her mother, proves that she is who she says she is. Her advice would be much appreciated in the matters we are going to be discussing.”

          “Yes, Daddy. We’ll be there shortly. We just have to deal with my Numbskull of a brother first.”

          “What has he done this time?”

          “He headbutted Wilde hard enough to knock himself unconscious without managing to hurt her. We'll drop him off at the medical center on our way,” replied Sasha to her father's sigh before putting the communicator away.

          While she was doing that, I decided not to wait and used my jaguar’s claws, courtesy of my Fae self, to cut myself free. Mastering the partial transformation to use either set of claws on my human hands was rather tricky, but well worth it since I don’t have to carry a knife with me all of the time. Besides, when I wanted them to be, my dragon claws were far sharper than any knife.

          “Oh, you’ve already cut yourself free I see. They didn't even slow you down did they?”

          “Nope. That would require custom gear that y'all don't have.”

          “Let me guess, that gear gets really expensive in a hurry.”

          “Oh, you have no idea.”

          “On a different note, what happened with Numbskull? Why is he unconscious and why don't you even seem mad that he hit you?”

          “I’m a dragon and I thought he was a troll, so when he started to headbutt me I braced accordingly. I guess he hasn’t been allocating enough mana for his troll self. That didn’t even hurt me, and he appears to be out cold,” I said as I pulled a medical diagnostic wand out of my smart wrist bag and ran it over Numbskull. At her confused expression, I added: “A properly supplied troll in even halfway decent physical shape could have hit me hard enough to make my ears ring and ignored the fractured head they received in return.”

          “Don't you mean fractured skull?”

          “Nope. Adult trolls are two hundred tons of steel and stone and something else born of the earth, and their healing abilities are blatantly ridiculous. As long as there is a mostly intact piece of them larger than a basketball they'll make a full recovery in three to eight days.”

          “Oh. That's…”

          “Mind-boggling?”

          “Yes, that. Wait, if trolls are that hard to kill, then how did Daddy think that a dagger could kill your Aunt?”

          “It was the early days of magic. Even then, Aunt Frida was far stronger than your average troll due to her very unique circumstances. Most trolls weren't that hard to kill for at least another decade.”

          “Huh, ok. Backing up a bit, what did you mean when you said you braced for impact? You were tied to a tree and barely moved before he hit you.”

          “The first thing I used is a handy trick called Form Armor, which transferred the incoming damage to an equivalent surface area of my dragon-self. Only if the attack had managed to hurt my dragon-self would my human-self have taken any damage. In addition to this, I also used a couple of similar tricks which allowed me to harness a fair portion of my dragon’s strength and mass in my human form, forcing him and the tree I was tied to take more of the impact. Well, that was the plan anyway.

          “Only, instead of the bone-jarring impact that I had expected because troll, all I got was a love tap to the forehead before the rest of him bounced off of me and fell on the ground.”

          “Oh?” she responded, cocking an eyebrow, “That sounds like a useful trick.”

          “Oh, yes. It is very useful. The downside is drawing on my dragon like that requires feeding her metabolism. That little stunt probably cost me at least fifteen hundred calories. Probably more like three thousand honestly.”

          “What.”

          “It wouldn't be anywhere near so bad if this place wasn't magically isolated, but until I find a way through the barrier, I'm going to be hungry. I'll probably have to go hunting in an hour or two.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

          “But Daddy told me to feed you.”

          “Unless you have a couple of dozen head of cattle you can spare, you don't have enough food. Going back to Numbskull here, the med wand says he’ll be fine in a few hours. He got lucky and somehow managed to avoid getting a concussion out of that.” I said as I picked up Numbskull in a fireman’s carry. “Where’s this medical clinic then?”

          “Um, are you sure you want to carry him?”

          “I’m a dragon. My foot weighs more than he does. Even without drawing on my dragon, I'm stronger than I look.”

          “Right. If you’d follow me, the clinic is this way.”

*****Hai Lung's POV*****

          I knew the instant that they brought Wilde onto the island, and I rejoiced inside.

          Normally, I wouldn’t have been so happy that my girlfriend had been kidnapped, but her arrival meant that my freedom is pretty much guaranteed. The only question is which set of fireworks would see me freed: my dragon waking up from his hibernation now that some of his magic supply is back, or Wilde's intolerance for ignorance and stupidity. Admittedly, most dragons have that problem, myself included, unless it is our enemies being stupid or ignorant. I would have dealt with it myself, except I'm in no position to properly deal with the ignorance and stupidity I'm currently immersed in. Not with this enchanted slave collar around my neck.

          Ignorance aside, the timing and manner of her arrival literally could not have been better. I didn’t have to lift a finger to make Dominik suspicious and send his daughter to search Buscov's section of the forest again. Not with the racket produced by the dying engine in the antique Cessna they flew her in on and the poorly disguised attempts to delay the town council meeting. Which, by the way, had been scheduled more than a week in advance.

          Now all I have to do is attend the town meeting and wait for the fireworks to begin.

          I’m coming for you, my Dragon from the Sea. Wilde thought to me, interrupting my reverie.

          I’ll be waiting for you Māo Māo. I wish this man would let me scratch my neck. I replied, sending her a picture of Buscov, who was standing next to me, highlighting the odd prism on a stick hanging from his belt.

          I would have loved to tell her directly what was going on, that someone had gassed me and sold me into slavery, but the standing order to tell nobody about my captivity meant that I couldn’t. There was also a standing order to not try to escape, which is annoying, but easy enough to work around. I thank God every day that the enchanted slave collar they had on me was an antiquated piece of junk. As such, it had no way of indicating that it barely has the strength to hold me in my weakened state. If they had put a stronger or more modern collar on me, I never could have bent the rules the way I did.

          As Buscov's advisor and right-hand man, it was my job to prevent him from committing suicide, even if it was accidental. Attempting to kidnap the Terran Space Lord most definitely counts as suicide. Kidnapping his daughter, on the other hand, might be survivable, especially if you have someone who knows her as well as I do.

          Where are you? asked Wilde, dragging me back to the present. My thoughts are getting really scatterbrained with the gaping hole where my dragon normally is.

          Come on Hai Lung! Focus!

          Just let the lady escort you to the meeting and help them with their ignorance. Yes, I do have an itch that I cannot scratch, but there is only one person here that has anything to do with my itch, and he has far too much pride to let you destroy his little kingdom with facts and logic. There, that should get her moving in the right direction without violating my orders.

          So, you're saying just be me and he'll come after me?

          A clever Māo like you shouldn’t have any issues. I’ll see you when you get here, I’ve stretched my orders as far as I dare for today.

          Then I mentally hung up, ending the conversation.

          Then I mentally drifted for a while, saving my strength for when my dragon woke up.

          When next I was aware of my surroundings, Dominik was yelling at Buscov as Wilde stepped into the room with Sasha right behind her.

          “Why did you even think kidnapping her was a good idea you pridurok!” yelled Dominik.

          “She’s a beast tamer without any of her beasts. What’s she going to do? Throw random pieces of fruit at us?” replied Buscov.

          Let the fireworks begin! I thought to myself as I took half a step sideways out of Wilde’s line of fire.

***** Wilde Jägur’s POV *****

          “There it is,” Sasha informed me fifteen minutes later after we had dropped her brother off at the medical clinic. She was pointing at a rather large building with a dilapidated chain-link fence around it. “The meeting is in that warehouse. At least, it was supposed to be a warehouse. The company that owned it fell apart when the magic came back and mostly isolated this island from the outside world, leaving the outside of the building complete, but the shelving is still in piles on the floor.”

          “Oh? Why hold the meeting in an almost warehouse?”

          “It’s the largest building in what is left of the town with working air conditioning.”

          Then my smart wrist bag blared its emergency notification tone in my head, and I told it to play the audible version as well.

          “One moment,” I said as I checked my notifications, of which there were several. The most important of which is that it had compensated for the local jamming field and reconnected with the local cell towers. Because of this connection, I received an order to report in when and if I could, along with a notification that a rescue effort was being organized.

          I sent a brief reply saying that I don’t need rescuing just yet, the situation is under control and outside interference would be a hindrance rather than a help for the moment. I also indicated that I had found Hai Lung, before reiterating that between the two of us we have everything under control and promising a more detailed report once I had the entire picture. Hopefully, Papa would listen with the 'all is well' code words I'd included.

          With that notification taken care of, I looked at the first one about the anti-jamming functions. It took a little digging, but I eventually realized that the “jamming” in question was the same natural phenomenon responsible for the magical isolation of the island of Malta, my current location. I discovered this because the old-fashioned GPS satellites haven't been replaced with a version using more modern magically enhanced signals, so the magical isolation didn't affect them at all. With my location known, so were the cell network signals that my smart wrist bag should have been receiving. From there, it was a simple matter of applying a variety of filters until it found a filter set that resulted in an intelligible signal.

          On a hunch, I applied the same set of filters to my passive magic, which involved modifying the frequency slightly, adding some phase angle oscillation and shifting the bandwidth slightly. It felt kinda like trying to talk with the wrong set of teeth in your mouth or doing certain tasks with your nondominant hand for the first time. It was unwieldy and clumsy at first, but the longer I held it the more natural it felt.

          A couple of moments later, I was able to reconnect to all of my territory again, briefly flooding me with the mana I should have had coming in all along. It wasn't long before the flow stabilized back to where it should be.

          What surprised me was that I was also flooded with mana from Hai Lung's territory, which rushed right back out of me through our dating bond just as fast as it came in. The flow cut off a moment later as Hai Lung instinctively applied the same filter to his own magic having felt me apply it to mine.

          I expected a thank you or something, but all I got was the mental equivalent of snoring. I guess he must have really been out of it.

          Then Papa’s ringtone went off.

          “Hey, Papa!”

          “Hey, Wilde. Are you ok?” He replied in Saka silap, an almost unknown tongue from the middle of nowhere in the Brazilian rainforest. The only people who speak the language are the two hundred-ish inhabitants of the village, my family, and two or three missionaries who are translating the Bible for them.

          “I’m doing great Papa! I found my boyfriend and my dragon is considering something she won't tell me about. Oh, and I met a new Numbskull.”

          “Oh? What species was it?”

          “Human, unfortunately. Possibly a little bit of troll. He tried to prove that he wasn’t a Numbskull by headbutting me in the forehead. Unsurprisingly, he knocked himself out with my head.”

          “Wat.”

          “You heard me.”

          “Ok, your Numbskull is winning. For now.”

          “Hooray! Its been a while since I’ve won our impromptu contest.”

          “It has. On a different note, I regret to inform you that your mystical ability to avoid getting a bodyguard detail has finally been thwarted.”

          “Drat. Well, I am your child. I’ve known I’d be getting a Dragon Guard security detail sooner or later. Who are they sending to babysit me?”

          Once upon a time, the Dragon Guard was a mercenary troop that Father hired regularly. One long story later, they ended up as his bodyguards, and from there it was only a matter of time until the ended up as the bodyguards for the entire Council of Seven, not to mention the premier special forces group on the planet and the emergency backup for law enforcement the world over.

          “Broohn and I saw something, so you and Hai Lung are getting a joint detail with Landon and Abigail as the team leads.”

          Now it was my turn to say “Wat.”

          As a child of my parents, I knew I would be getting at least a high silver ranked squad or two, maybe even a mid-gold ranked squad. The same goes for Hai Lung. Landon and Abigail on their own with no support could qualify as high gold to low platinum except for the fact that there’s only two of them. Since they would be hand-picking the members of their squads, Hai Lung and I were going to end up with a high plat rated security detail.

          “Papa, I know you love me and all, but isn’t that a bit much? A Mage Null and an Amp of their skills–”

          “Broohn and I saw something. I cannot tell you more.”

          “Alright, Papa. In that case, I’ll be sending you a live feed from my smart wrist bag. I’m assuming that you’ll be delivering them personally?”

          “I’ll be porting them in yes, but I have an emergency council meeting in less than a minute, so I can’t show up myself. You’re still my favorite eldest daughter.”

          “Papa, I’m your only eldest daughter.”

          “True, but as always I choose to tell you that you’re my favorite.”

          “Thank you, Papa. Hopefully, I’ll get to see you soon.”

          “You as well. Goodbye.”

          “Goodbye Papa.”

          At this point, we had reached the door into the warehouse where we paused while I finished my phone call, so I stepped forward and opened the door to shouting in heavily accented English.

          “Why did you even think kidnapping her was a good idea you pridurok!” yelled Dominik.

          “She’s a beast tamer without any of her beasts. What’s she going to do? Throw random pieces of fruit at us?” replied the man next to Hai Lung.

          This was too good of an opportunity to pass up, so I pulled a coconut out of the quick select on my smart wrist bag and beaned the man in the back of the head with it, unleashing a torrent of swearing that I was frankly glad I didn’t understand. Since it seems I’m making a grand entrance, I also changed into a very, very nice pantsuit in a muted rainforest camo pattern with matching two-inch heels. Not that my human form is all that impressive even with the heels, but they make such a satisfying sound when I walk. I’ve always enjoyed amplifying said sounds with a bit of draconic weight and mass. With the hardened concrete floor of the warehouse, I could go to town without having to worry about breaking the floor. Even if I did, Hai Lung was enough of his mother’s child that fixing it wouldn’t be an issue.

          “Gahhhh! What idiot hit me in the back of the head with a coconut?”

          “There are no idiots with coconuts in here,” I replied.

          Clip.

          Clop.

          I slowly sauntered over to the group, unconcerned by the glares pointed in my direction. A moment's concentration told me that the only two people in the room who weren’t shadow mages were Hai Lung and me, confirming my suspicions. I had been kidnapped by what was left of the shadow mage organization that had tried to take over the world in the early days of magic. If Dominik is still alive and in charge as he seems to be, then most of these guys aren’t the ones who were trying to take over the world, but rather the cannon fodder who had no choice.

          “Where did you even get a coconut?” asked someone from the crowd.

          “I buy them in bulk as treats for my triceratopses two or three times a year. They're also useful for throwing at people who annoy me, mostly my siblings.”

          “You give your siblings concussions on a regular basis?!” exclaimed someone else.

          “They're dragons. Even hitting them hard enough to shatter the coconut can’t possibly give them a concussion. So, what is it that you wanted my advice on Dominik?”

          “How to take over the world!” interjected the man I hit with a coconut.

          “I’m sorry, who are you exactly?” I asked, one eyebrow cocked.

          “I am Buscov, the one who is destined to elevate us shadow mages to our rightful place!”

          “And what place might that be?”

          “We are shadow mages!” shouted Buscov, an edge of mania creeping into his voice. “It is our birthright to be ruling the world! We are the strongest magic users on the planet! None can stand before us!”

          “Oh really?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “What makes you think that?”

          “It’s blatantly obvious you stumbletoon! We can strike first and strike harder than anyone else! We’re also better looking and smarter to boot!” He continued in a similar vein for another couple of moments, but I was looking at Dominik to see what he going to do rather than paying attention. He just sighed and gestured at me as if to say, “You deal with it, he won’t listen to me.” Internally, my dragon started grinning, my Fae-self started purring and my human-self was rubbing her hands together in glee. None of this made it to my face of course. I didn’t want to scare off my prey before I could stalk him properly.

          I waited until Buscov stopped to take a breath, then I said, “Alright, let’s suppose you’re right. What’s your grand scheme for taking over the world? You do realize that there’s currently just over twelve billion people on the planet, right? There is no way you can control that many people with the two hundred and fifty-ish people that you have here in this room even if they were all in their prime.”

          “We’d take over some of the more militant groups around the world and have them work for us. Like those white supremacists who took over Vancouver just before our exile.”

          “Yeah, no. Vancouver is gone,” I said, tapping away on my smart wrist bag.

          “What do you mean Vancouver is gone? Didn’t they have something that prevented people from attacking them?”

          “They did. I don’t know how they did it, but somehow they tricked a bunch of world leaders into signing a magically binding agreement that they would not attack Vancouver or its residents, then kicked out anyone who wasn’t one of them.”

          “Hah! So they have an unassailable position! There’s no way they lost the city with that kind of agreement in place!”

          “If they had kept to themselves, we would have ignored them, but they didn’t. They started abusing the agreement and attacking everyone around them, so the Lady of Yellowstone and the Russian Frost Giant got together and decided they’d had enough of this. They showed up on opposite sides of the city and cranked their body temperatures as far as they would go in opposite directions, then they walked in circles around the city until it was no more.”

          “Question: who and/or what is the Lady of Yellowstone?” interrupted Dominik.

          “That would be my Aunt Frida, who, as I’m sure many of you know, is a volcano troll. Two-hundred tons of steel and stone and lava. Both she and the Russian Frost Giant usually have personal wards up to contain the adverse effects of their body temperatures. For this stunt, both of them ‘accidentally’ turned those off. They weren’t technically attacking the city, they were just going for a very slow walk. A really destructive, very slow walk. This is all that is left,” I said, throwing a five-meter diameter projection of the city into the middle of the room with my smart wrist bag.

          It was a picture of devastation like nothing else this world had ever seen. Some buildings had been partially burnt and melted, then frozen so quickly they shattered into pieces. Other sections were just ash, and still others where things had just shattered from the cold. The closer to the center of the city you looked, the greater the destruction became as the war between the elements escalated

          Everyone was staring at the image in shock at the scale of the devastation, so I figured that this would be a good time for Banana Face to sneak in here and steal the object off of Buscov’s belt. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve used one of my monkeys to pick someone’s pocket, and given the way my life goes, it probably won’t be the last.

          “You lie!” Yelled Buscov. “This is a doctored image to trick us into thinking that–”

          I didn’t wait for him to finish. Using my dragon’s speaking voice, I talked over him. “ON MY HONOR, ON MY MAGIC, ON MY LIFE, I SWEAR TO YOU THAT I HAVE NOT AND WILL NOT LIE TO YOU TODAY. THIS IMAGE IS A LIVE SATELLITE FEED OF VANCOUVER WITH A MERE SEVEN SECONDS WORTH OF PROCESSING DELAY.”

          Once again, the room was silent save for the residual echoes of my proclamation, but soon enough even those faded away. It’s not every day someone makes an Oath of Power after all. They are not something to be taken lightly, not with the grisly death that awaits those who break them.

          In this silence that followed, Banana Face handed me the object that he had stolen from Buscov’s belt, which I knew to be the key to a slave collar. Putting two and two together, I realized that Hai Lung must have the corresponding collar on his neck. From prior experience, I knew that the key wouldn’t work unless the owner was the one to use it, which is usually rather difficult to bypass.

          Fortunately, I’m a dragon, so forcibly changing ownership wasn’t a problem.

          Before I could act on this, I got another notification from my smart wrist bag inviting me to join our bodyguard’s tac-net. Doing so allowed all of us to communicate silently without anyone else the wiser. That’s really the least it could do, but for now, it is the most important. I gladly accepted the invitation and, to my relief, they hadn’t yet invited Hai Lung.

          “Ma’am, L & A Defenders reporting for duty!” said Landon. “What’s the situation? Why did your father warn us not to contact Hai Lung until you say it is ok?”

          “Everything is under control. For now, at least,” I replied. “Hai Lung currently has a slave collar on his neck that I will be removing shortly and contacting him would probably force him to alert his owner of your presence, something that I’m not ready to do quite yet. Please remain hidden for a few more minutes until I can introduce you properly. As for the rest of the situation, most of the locals follow Dominik, and they shouldn’t be a problem. However, there are six of them who follow Buscov, and they’re all believers of his Pure Mage garbage.”

          “So, you’re saying we have a bunch of shadow mages who’s magic is distorting their view of reality because they refuse to dilute it with anything else?”

          “You got it. I’m currently in the process of shaking up their world, so things could go sideways at any time. Oh, before I forget, could one of you go grab Pokey and bring him here? I’m hoping we won’t need his skills, but better safe than sorry,” I asked, sending his current location to the tac-net.

          “I’m on it, Ma’am,” replied a deep-voiced man I should remember but can’t for some reason.

          Then the tac-net fell silent for the moment as I turned my attention back to the stunned shadow mages.

          Unsurprisingly, it was Dominik who pulled himself together first.

          “I knew dragons don’t do things by half measures, but I was not expecting… that.”

          I shrugged, the barest hint of a grin on my face for a moment before my hunter’s mask returned.

          “So, they’re out of the picture,” I said, turning back to Buscov. “Who else were you thinking of tricking into being your servants? The slavers perhaps?”

          “What!? How did you– No, I’m not planning on having anything to do with the slavers!”

          “Oh really? Then how do you explain this slave collar key that Banana Face here stole from your belt?” I said as Banana Face dropped his stealth and waved at Buscov from my shoulder, eliciting more angry sputtering from.

          Which is a good thing because it gave me the half-second I needed to do some mental gymnastics and put my dragon-self in the driver’s seat for the moment.

          “I like this key. I think I shall call it… MINE,” I said. As I spoke, I held the key in front of my face, examining it closely, then closed my fist around it just before the last word left my mouth. In the past, it had taken Papa a minute or two to claim a single key in this fashion, but that was before the slavers’ central registry system had been destroyed, allowing me to claim the key in less than half a second.

          “Hai Lung, by the power of this key, I grant you freedom from slavery,” I said, tossing him the key, which he promptly used.

          “How dare you!” screamed Buscov. “I will tell the slavers of this theft and they will deal with you most severely!”

          While Buscov was yelling at me, Hai Lung crumpled his former slave collar into a mangled ball, before walking over and wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

          “Unfortunately for you, that’s an empty threat these days. At one time, they might have been able to punish me for my theft, but not anymore.”

          “What!? How can they not have the power to punish you? They have control of most of Africa!”

          “That’s the problem with basing your plans on fifty-year-old information: it is horribly out of date. For instance, you know how good my father was at teleporting stuff back then? Yeah, as the magic got stronger, he got a lot better at teleporting. Since none of you are wanted for the actions of your former leaders, seeing as none of you were participating of your own free will, I’ve been in contact with him since I woke up. Since I got kidnapped, I have finally been assigned a bodyguard detail.”

          “Let me guess: your father ported them here didn’t he?” asked Dominik.

          “Yes, he did. Would it be ok if they joined us?”

          “NO! We cannot let them know where we are! They’ll kill us all!” yelled Buscov while Dominik nodded his acceptance.

          “You should have thought of that before you decided to kidnap me. The Council of Seven has known where you are since I walked into this room. As a side note, if they come after you, they’d arrest you and make sure you received the due process of law. Given how long y’all have been in hiding, the first step would be putting a bounty on your heads.”

          “Oh? How big is my bounty?” asked Buscov.

          “You don’t have one. Yet.”

          “What do you mean I don’t have one yet!?”

          “I haven’t had a chance to file kidnapping charges against you yet. Honestly, you probably won’t get a bounty since I can just arrest you myself. I am one of Papa’s enforcers after all.”

          Buscov just stood there, slack-jawed.

          “Dominik, you’re the only other person in the room with a bounty on their head, but yours is only for info on your whereabouts. My parents and Aunt Frida would love to see you again.”

          “Really? There are no bounties leftover from the events of the past?” Asked someone from the crowd.

          “No there aren't. Most of the governments that would have wanted you have collapsed and those that still exist have been absorbed by the Council of Seven.”

          “Forget the Council! We can still use the Slavers to conquer the world!” yelled Buscov.

          “I told you the world has changed. The Slavers are a thing of the past. Bear with me a moment, as their story is a bit more complicated than Vancouver's.

          “At the height of their power, the slavers controlled everything except Timbuktu, Egypt, and South Africa. They simply hadn't managed to conquer Timbuktu yet, though they did have it under siege for quite some time before their downfall. Egypt, being Egypt, had a ridiculously strong magic heritage and slaughtered their one attempt at conquest. Finally, South Africa was the only diamond-producing country in Africa that hadn’t fallen apart when the magic truly came back. By the time the slavers tried to conquer them, the enchanted electronics industry had started to take off, making diamonds, with their blatantly ridiculous mana storage capacity, one of the most sought-after commodities on the planet. With so many of their competitors in the diamond market having fallen to the slavers, and nobody else willing to trade with the slavers for fear of being captured, South Africa was making bank hand over fist. They hired mercenaries from all over the place and without putting a noticeable dent in their profit margin.

          “About this time, the UN underwent another massive reorganization because the first one, which had added the phrase ‘World Council of Elders’ to their name, wasn’t working. This time, it simply became The Council of Seven, with one seat on the council for every continent. There is more to it than that, both in terms of why and how the reorganization happened, but this isn’t the time or the place to discuss it.

          "Unsurprisingly, my father got the seat for South America and my Aunt Frida, the aforementioned Lady of Yellowstone, got the seat for North America. The Australian seat went to a man by the name of Ozzy Melbourne, who can do temporary enchantments and finding ways to make the incompatible into the compatible. That might not sound like much, but keep in mind that he has enough power to make it into the Council. Power is something he does not lack.”

          When I paused for breath, Hai Lung glanced at me asking if he could tell the rest, so I let him.

          “My mother, who is also a dragon, by the way, got the seat for Asia, and her thing is infrastructure. The last seat that has been claimed at this time is the seat for Africa, and it was claimed by a man named Martin Harriet Sojourner Mandela. He got the seat by kicking the slavers out and bringing stability to Africa. By the way, his powers are primarily anti-slavery and justice-related.”

          “I don't believe you! There's no way that the Slavers were conquered! They had too much power!”

          “It's kind of hard to keep slaves when the collars and cages fall apart. Eventually, once things progressed far enough that Papa got involved, the slaves started disappearing as their collars came off,” I said.

          “Shut up and die!” yelled Buscov, throwing a significant amount of power at me before I could dodge. Surprisingly, Buscov had a rather clever idea and tried to turn the shadows in my lungs into solids. It would have been a rather nasty way to die, except casting spells inside of someone else’s body is rather tricky. This is because every living thing has a certain amount of magic that imbues every part of their being and is, quite literally, their life force. This life force actively resists foreign magic, especially foreign magic that is intended to harm. Many times, this resistance is far stronger than the amount of available life force would seem to indicate.

          In other words, it is possible to cast spells that affect the inside of other people’s bodies, but it requires skill, patience, and subtlety, all of which Buscov is sorely lacking at the moment. It is easier if the patient is a willing participant, which, obviously, I am not.

          While his spell was tickling my lungs, I pulled a pair of suppression cuffs and charged him. He pulled a shadow knife and tried to stab me in the chest.

          Keyword: tried.

          I grabbed his knife by the blade, turning his stab into a slash, and used his stubborn refusal to let go of it to drag his arm behind his back, at which point it was child’s play to cuff his hands and pin him to the floor.

          Yes, grabbing a shadow knife is generally considered a bad idea, but I’m a dragon, that rule doesn’t really apply.

          The crowd, who had slowly been distancing themselves from Buscov, backpedaled even faster, except for Dominik, a grizzled fellow that looked like the guard captain, an older lady in a doctor’s uniform and Sasha.

          “You idiot!” exclaimed Dominik.

          “Are you trying to lose fingers!?” added the guard captain.

          “Let me see!” demanded the nurse lady, grabbing my hand.

          “I’m gagging the nincompoop,” added Sasha, bending over Buscov.

          “I’m fine, see?” I replied, holding up my hand.

          “You just grabbed a shadow knife by the blade and you barely have a scratch. How!?” exclaimed the nurse.

          “She’s a dragon and can access her draconic AC even in human form,” explained Hai Lung. “Yes, the shadow knife spell can take just about any knife-shaped object and make it ridiculously sharp by adding an edge of hardened shadow to it. This is the spell’s greatest strength, but also its greatest weakness. Hardened shadow can get quite a bit sharper than even a mono-molecular blade because it isn’t made of atoms, but that same lack of atoms means that it is lacking in structural integrity. This is why it needs to be anchored to an actual knife.

          “Some materials, such as dragon scale and steel plate, take significant effort to cut no matter how sharp your knife is. Slashing them with a knife doesn't do much besides dull the blade, especially when your knife is much softer than they are. Yes, it is possible to cut through both materials with a shadow knife, but it requires multiple slashes to hit the same spot with considerable force. Stabbing is far more likely to succeed, but–”

          “I wasn't about to stand there and let him stab me.”

          “By the way Buscov, that’s the other problem with your plan. You’re not the only ones with strong magic anymore.”

          “But our spells were rather effective when our old leaders tried to take over the world,” said the guard in confusion. “Shouldn’t they still be effective?”

          “That was in the early days of magic when there was very little power to speak of. Your former leaders discovered a bunch of spells that were very effective for not much power, and there was so much magic-induced chaos that there almost wasn’t anyone organized enough to stop them. Honestly, there was so much chaos that Papa would have helped them if they’d had even a single care for the people under their command.”

          Silence.

          “W-w-what? B-but they did care–” sputtered an older lady in the crowd.

          “No, they most definitely did not,” boomed Dominik. “You forget that I was the second-highest-ranking person to survive their downfall. The only survivor that was ranked higher than me is the Moonlit Shadow, who they tried to abuse into submission because she cared too much for their plans to work. I saw what they would do to one of their own at the slightest chance for more power, and I wanted nothing to do with it. Sadly, I had to play their game if I wanted to protect any of you from said game. Many of you knew her mother,” gesturing at me, “the Moonlit Shadow. You know her heart, her compassion, her drive to do what is right, even if she was misled for a time. Do you really believe that she’d have turned on us if the rest of the Leaders had cared?”

          Again, there was silence.

          And again, it was Dominik who broke it.

          “I know this is a lot for you to take in. Let us adjourn–”

          Before he could continue, there was a loud popping noise as Aunt Frida was ported into the room, shortly followed by her security detail. At four foot nothing, her height was rather unimpressive, even for a Latino woman, but her personality and her outfit, a lime green suitcoat, neon yellow pants, and an orange dress shirt, more than made up for it. There was also something about the way she moved that was rather unique, a confidence that comes from an utter lack of fear, along with the abrupt yet ponderous movements that come with being a troll.

          The sheer amount of power coming off of her also help compensate for her lack of height.

          “Hello Domino, long time no see. Old age is treating you rather well I see.”

          “It’s good to see you, my old friend,” replied Dominik, “I’d say the same for you, except you don’t look like you’ve aged a day since I last saw you almost fifty years ago.”

          “Who are you?” asked the guard captain, pointing at my Aunt.

          “I am Frida DeSoto, the Lady of Yellowstone, Councilor for North America, Bane of Dragons, Power of Earth, Power of Fire, Destroyer of Vancouver. Is that sufficient identification?”

          Gulp. “Yes, Ma’am!”

          “Now do you see why I didn’t want to take over the world?” asked Dominik rhetorically, to a general chorus of agreement from around the room. “Conquering the world is a far bigger undertaking than any of you seem to realize. Also, ruling the world is a lot of work that I’d really rather not deal with. Ever.”

          “Oh, you have no idea,” agreed Aunt Frida. “Take it from me, someone who is actively participating in ruling the world, if all you want out of it is the power or a sense of superiority, it is totally not worth it. Of the five of us that are currently on the council, none of us wanted the job. We did not ask for it, we did nothing to try and earn our place on the council. We saw problems in the world around us and did our best to solve them without seeking personal gain beyond what was necessary to solve the problem. Everything that we did, we did to make the world a better place. This is why we were Chosen for the Council of Seven.”

          “Chosen by who?” asked Dominik.

          “I cannot answer that. I would love to, but I cannot,” she said in frustration.

          “If you say that you cannot, then I will believe you. I would also like to point out that there is a small mountain of idiots in the world, and ruling the world means that you have to deal with all of them.”

          “What do you mean 'small mountain'? Small continent more like.”

          “Amen Aunty!” I said, starting a wave of chuckles going around the room. “By the way, what are you doing here anyway? I thought you’d be stuck in that emergency council meeting with Papa?”

          “It wasn’t much of a meeting, but it did bring to light some issues with satellites and orbital debris and some other things that are best handled by your Papa ASAP before we have to replace a couple of billion dollars worth of satellites. Someone needed to check in on you, and I figured I might as well take this opportunity to get in touch with Domino again. He’s such a charming dotted brick.”

          “Thank you, Frito,” replied Dominik. “What does that even mean?”

          “If you figure it out, let me know.”

          “Only you Frito, only you. Now, getting back to the original reason for this meeting. What would it take for us to be able to stop hiding, to rejoin the world as citizens rather than fugitives? I know that our Leaders of Old were hated and feared for good reason, but I am an old man now and I’m frankly tired of hiding in the shadows. Everyone who is left was a victim just as much at the rest of the world.”

          “Is this everyone who survived the death of the Old Idiots?”

          All of the shadow mages winced at her name for their former masters, except Dominik who merely sighed and shook his head. He knew exactly how blunt she could be when she decided to speak her mind.

          “Everyone who still alive is here. Honestly, most of those here are either children or grandchildren of the original group. There are a couple of our younger warriors on sentry duty at the edge of the Deep Forest in case a Cerberus wanders out and tries to eat us again.”

          “What do you mean deep forest? I thought Malta was half city and half farmland?” asked my Aunt.

          “Before magic came back, yes. Now it’s mostly forest, and something is going on with the Deep Forest. It seems far larger than it should be, and there are lots of dangerous animals and monsters in there, so we don’t go in there.”

          “Fair enough. As for your question, it’s been long enough since their failed attempt to conquer the world and none of you were the instigators of the whole thing, so there are no actual criminal charges to deal with. Honestly, if we could find someone to be a liaison with the outside world and help you get your game in gear, I think that would work just fine, provided that you continue to be the primary leader. The liaison would have to be someone that has a sterling reputation and at least secondhand experience with the Old Idiots. You’d also have to formalize your government so that there is an official record of your laws and someone to enforce them, but an appropriate liaison will be able to help you take care of that. This is standard practice for Lost people groups like yourselves.”

          “Is it really that simple?”

          “Not normally no, but a lot of the usual requirements can be bypassed since my brother and I are all willing to vouch for your honor and integrity. That just leaves the question of who to appoint as liaison before I summon the red tape wizards.”

          “The what?”

          “Bureaucrat mages.”

          “Oh. This is a lot to think about,” said Dominik. “How about we adjourn for lunch and meet back here in two hours?”

          Since everyone agreed, that’s exactly what we did.

*****

          With the meeting out of the way and the idiot has been taken care of, I was finally free to greet Hai Lung properly.

          And by greet him, I mean attempt to pounce on him and lick his face with my Jaguar’s tongue.

          Enthusiastically.

          As usual, his response was to try to squirt me in the face with some seawater, and I did my best to dodge. It quickly devolved into a brief wrestling match that ended in a draw, followed by a hug.

          When we finally let go, everyone except for our security detail and a few people who had packed their lunches had left the room, leaving us pretty much alone. The only exception was Sasha, who was standing there gaping at us.

          “What’s wrong?” I asked.

          “So that’s why he wasn’t interested. He already had a girlfriend,” she sighed.

          “Yes, I do,” apologized Hai Lung. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you that straight up. It never occurred to Buscov to ask me who I was before I ended up his slave, and I needed to keep it that way for my escape plan to work.”

          “Wait, your ‘escape plan’ was to get me kidnapped and then watch the fireworks?” I demanded.

          “Yup. I enjoyed watching you rip his delusions apart. I wasn’t planning on your Aunt crashing the party, but that’s kinda what she does best.”

          “True. So how about you two give me a tour of the island while we’re waiting?”

          “I have no problem with that as long as I can go fishing first.”

          “Sure. Grab some for me too!”