“Question?” Delta poked my side as our hovercraft docked at the edge of the village close to our parents’ home.
“Yea?” I stretched.
“Would you be able to cut up the remnants of the Basq ship’s dragonheart core to make me bracelets to keep me warm?” She asked. “Isn’t it just a big crystal? I like Lizz and all, but it seems like if I had to hug her forever it would interfere in the rest of my life.”
“Alas, no. By itself the dragonheart is just a battery,” I said.
“A battery that you used to shoot Aradria out of the sky,” my twin pointed out.
“An uncontrolled release of anti-magic is very different from a controlled positively-charged spiral,” I said.
“Explain,” Delta demanded.
“Look, it’s sort of like the function of rods in a nuclear reactor,” I clarified.
“Nuclear reactor?” Kliss murmured. “Rods?”
“Imagine a giant pot of water sitting on a stove. That pot is kind of like a reactor in a nuclear power plant. Now, inside that pot, there's a special kind of fuel that can heat the water much, much hotter than any normal stove could. The problem is, if you just threw all that fuel in at once, the water would boil over and create a huge, explosive mess, a catastrophic release of power,” I explained. “When I shot Aradria from the sky, I did just that - explosions are easy. It was easy to uncontrollably unleash the energy stored within the dragonheart core from the Basq ship.”
“Uh-huh?” Delta frowned. “So our Lizzy is what? Rods?”
“Essentially,” I nodded. “The core of her soul and its threads act sort of like reactor rods.”
Kliss tilted her gemstone-covered head at me.
“In my boiling pot metaphor, these ‘rods’ are what controls the heat. They can be pushed in and out of the pot of water. More rods in: The rods absorb some of the heat from the fuel, keeping the water from getting too hot. Fewer rods in: The rods absorb less heat, letting the water get hotter and produce more steam. Your soul can insert more or less threads into your dragonheart reactor, Kliss.”
“But why?” the dragon-girl asked.
“As you’ve seen from our trip to lake Skybliss,” I said. “The membrane between the physical world and the Astral Ocean is uneven. In some places, negatively-charged magic affects Delta and me more, in some less. When the Astral is much closer to us, its current is much more powerful. The reactor in your heart constantly adjusts itself to produce a very steady spiral pattern that perpetually protects you from the negatively-charged currents of magic. Without your soul, there would be nothing to control the dragonheart in your chest and the positively-charged magical spiral waveform would simply collapse.”
“I see,” Kliss murmured. “So my soul keeps my dragonheart running.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Your soul is a control mechanism for your heart. Without it, positively-charged, perpetually reinforced magic is impossible.”
“So you cannot fully carve Aradria’s soul-shards from me?” Kliss bit her lip.
“Alas, I cannot,” I sighed. “Or your heart will stop functioning and most likely kill you… in about 21 days.”
“Why 21 days?” She asked.
“That’s how long it would take for the incompatibility between your crystalline heart-core and your soul to fully tear apart your soul,” I said. “It’s just a rough estimate though, it could be slightly more or slightly less.”
“I see,” Kliss frowned.
“Then… how do dragonhearts function in skyships?” Delta demanded.
“The dragonheart we pilfered from the Basq skyship didn’t produce positively-charged magic,” I explained. “It was only capable of producing negatively-charged, impermanent magic. The anti-magic explosion it made only lasted for a second and then dissolved into the Astral.”
“Could you not design a spell that would function akin to her soul that would control little dragonheart crystals?” Delta asked, eyeing Kliss.
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “The thing is – it would have to be a very complex spell array constantly aware of what it has to do to sustain a positively-charged magical spiral waveform. Dragon souls are… exceedingly complex.”
“Lizzy doesn’t have the entire dragon soul though, right?” Delta pressed.
“No, she does not,” I said. “She only has the most valuable parts, ones that control the dragon’s essential organs.”
“What if we cut off little shards and dispense them into little dragonheart crystals?” Delta suggested.
Kliss opened and closed her mouth, clearly not sure if she wanted her soul to be cut up.
“No,” I said. “Aradria’s soul-shards are doing a great job. The spiral waveform they manage is extremely stable. If I remove any of the ‘control rods’, a cascade soul-fracture might start and then Kliss will have only 21 days to live. I really wouldn’t want that. Maybe when she invests more points into soul and grows up more, but then again her heart will grow with her.”
“Bah,” Delta crossed her arms. “What if we kill another dragon and then shoved their soul into their dragonheart?”
“It still wouldn’t work,” I said. “Kliss has a full array of dragon organs that I took from Aradria. All of them work together to make her crystal heart function properly.”
“Organs, like what?” My twin demanded.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Here’s the most obvious one,” I pointed to the sparkling mane atop of our friend’s head.
“Uhhh,” Delta squinted at the sparkly hair. “Dragons don’t have hair. I didn’t see anything like that on Aradria’s corpse.”
“Aradria had similar crystals growing atop and between her scales,” I said. “There was a lot of smoke in the air, so you probably didn’t pay much attention to them.”
“Oh,” Delta murmured. “Right! I forgot. They looked like a crown of violet-red crystals at the top of the forehead spikes.”
Kliss stared at me very intensely.
“Quit drilling me with your eyes and ask your questions,” I told her.
“What do the gems in my hair do exactly?” She asked. “Delta said that they’re batteries, but that can’t be all, right?”
“They’re actually a very complex cluster of magical crystals,” I said. “Connected directly to your dragonheart. They sort of act like a vent in a power plant, capable of… drawing power in directly from the Astral and releasing the buildup of ‘steam in the pot’ if necessary. They function as a magnifier of the dragonheart’s power, connecting it to your hoard items. This isn’t the entire explanation, by far, because I’m still investigating all of their functions.”
“I see. So, why are they… soft and hard at the same time?” Kliss asked, petting one of her gem-covered hair strands. “Is it cus they’re magic? I’m curious if something soft-hard exists in your world.”
“Ah, absolutely,” I affirmed. “Soft-hard materials were common in my world and they exist on Novazem too, without any magic. Non-Newtonian fluid is an extreme example of such.”
Kliss tilted her head, expecting a deeper explanation.
“Non-Newtonian fluid is actually very easy to make,” I said. “I can show you how to make it in my mom’s kitchen. It simply requires a cup of cornstarch mixed with half a cup of water. When you gently touch it, it feels loose and runny, like watery soup. But if you try to stir it fast or grab it with a big handful, it suddenly stiffens up, almost like trying to grab wet sand at the beach!”
“Why?”
“Cornstarch is made up of tiny, long particles. When mixed with water, these particles can flow freely past each other, like a liquid. But, when you apply pressure by stirring, punching or squeezing, the particles jam up against each other, making it act like a solid,” I explained.
“So… my hair is sort of like that?”
“Sort of,” I nodded. “I would call it Non-Newtonian crystals if I had to label it, since your hair can rapidly alternate between being incredibly soft and being insanely hard. The surfaces of your hair gems when they’re relaxed constantly ripple and shift, like light playing on water casting the most incredible caustics.”
“Caustics?” Kliss tasted the foreign word.
“When light rays hit a curved or transparent object such as your hair, they can either bend a.k.a. 'refract', or bounce back a.k.a. 'reflect'. This bending or reflecting creates a concentrated area of light where the rays come together, like a bunch of arrows hitting the same target. The caustics produced by your hair are particularly eye-catching because of how many internal facets each gem has,” I explained. “There are a multitude of Facets Within Facets: Individual crystals might appear faceted, but these facets melt and reform upon closer inspection – their geometry is in constant flux!”
“Why are they in flux?” Kliss asked, focusing her eyes on the nearest gem and the rainbows dancing within.
“Magical alignment,” I explained. “The internal structure of your hair gems constantly rearranges itself depending on the local aetheric density. Just like in the case of your dragonheart, your soul threads constantly adjusts the flux of your hair so that you can draw in and expel mana with great ease. Your hair… is constantly breathing magic in and out, similarly to how a person breathes air in and out of their lungs. That’s why they’re an essential organ. I guess another biological association I can make here is the colourful chaetae of starfish, which they use for both sensation and defence.”
“Oh wow,” Kliss murmured. “I can indeed sorta sense when someone’s touching my hair! So… Can my hair be cut?”
“No, it cannot,” I said.
“What?” Kliss blinked.
“From what my Infoscopes told me, your hair strands cannot be cut,” I repeated. “Not with anything we have in our possession anyway.”
“What, really?” Delta asked. “But they feel so soft and silky, how can they not be cut?”
“That’s what I think, yes,” I said. “It would require some kind of a divine-level knife to cut through this hair.”
Delta’s eyes lit up.
“Can I try cutting your hair?” She grinned at Kliss.
The dragon-girl stared at my sister and then at me.
I nodded.
“Go ahead,” Kliss said.
Delta pulled out a steel knife from her belt with a grin and tried slicing one of the gems off a hair strand. It didn’t work. Next she poked one of the gems. The knife simply bounced off the crystal with a pling.
“Holy shit,” Delta said. “Your hair is freaking indestructible!”
“Not completely indestructible,” I laughed. “But as an organ it’s insanely tough and has absurd resistance to deformation. If you press lightly on a crystal it behaves like a very thick liquid. Yet, when struck with force, it becomes incredibly rigid, similar to Non-Newtonian fluid!”
Delta gently petted the gemstone with her fingers. The red-violet gem sparkled from her touch, slightly wobbling as if it was made from very shiny jello. She tried slicing it very slowly and encountered resistance as the gem surface hardened.
“Even cutting it slowly doesn’t work,” she complained.
“There is a constantly running internal defence mechanism that rearranges the crystalline structure to protect it even from slow-moving damage,” I said.
“Damn it, I’m so freakin’ jelly,” Delta murmured. “Why aren’t these all over her body, wouldn't they make her ridiculously awesome natural armor?”
“I ran out of mana before I could add such,” I exhaled. “Dragons do have soft-hard scales all over their bodies. Kliss only has the semi-crystalline-organic skin which was located right beneath dragon scales on Aradria.”
“Dragonscales, huh?” Kliss murmured, rubbing her chin.
“Now that I think about it, you might be able to grow some dragonscales if you invest lots of points into Strength, it’s not entirely out of the question,” I said. “I don’t have data on newborn dragons, but just like you, they might not have magic scales all over their bodies until they get older.”
“Hold up! Can we not harvest dragon scales from Aradria’s corpse to make incredible armor for us?” Delta demanded. “Shouldn’t there be lots of…”
“No,” I shook my head. “There’s nothing left there, except for a desiccated, useless husk. The Goddess of the Hunt and I sucked all magic out of the dragon. Every last bit of mana from bones, organs, claws and scales. Saving Kliss, converting her body cell by cell wasn’t cheap.”
“Damn it, Slava,” Delta huffed. “Way to crush my dragonscale dress dreams.”
“Find another dragon and take them out,” I shrugged.
Delta stared at Kliss.
“What?” the dragon-girl asked.
“It is unfortunate that I cannot shear your hair,” she lamented.
“Ha!” Kliss stuck her tongue out at my sister.
I smiled at their playful banter. It was nice that the girls were finally getting along.
“Um,” Delta turned back to me. “If her hair can’t be cut off and if it keeps growing… is she going to turn into a crystal sphere like a sheep that hasn't been sheared for decades?”
Kliss looked at me with a concerned expression.
“No,” I laughed. “Once again, her hair is an interconnected, self-regulating organ. It’s not like human hair or fingernails, it’s more like a sea creature’s chaetae — it just won't grow past a certain point.”
“But what if it does?” Delta asked with a sly look.
“Then we will figure out how to deal with it, together,” I smiled at my companions.
“Together,” Kliss nodded and grabbed both of our hands.