[Dante Alan Skyisle]

I woke up to the gentle caress of sunlight on my face and the soft rustle of leaves. For a moment, I was lost, unsure of where I was. Then I felt it – the comforting warmth beneath my head that rushed across my entire body, a sensation so alien to my usual hands-made-from-ice existence. I opened my eyes and found myself staring into Kliss's emerald-gold gaze.

“You're awake,” she said, a soft smile gracing her lips. Her ruby-violet crystal hair, sparkled like a thousand tiny suns, cascaded around us, akin to a shimmering curtain.

I nodded.

“Feeling better?” She added.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, my head still throbbing faintly. “Just a bit… drained. Those girls managed to pull off the most high level magic I’ve had to disassemble thus far. How long was I out?”

“Just a couple of hours,” Kliss replied, her fingers gently stroking my hair.

I nodded.

“Slava,” Kliss began, her voice hesitant, “Why do you keep saving me?”

“Have we not already discussed this?” I yawned.

“I was so awful to you,” she insisted, her voice filled with remorse. “When I was Skyisle’s Overseer, I came close to killing you several times, almost pulled the trigger. Why did you risk so much for someone like me? You could have suffocated in that burning forest, could have died… all because of me.”

I studied her face, the worry etched into her features, an ocean of guilt shimmering in her emerald-ember eyes. She was very different now, the rigid, by-the-book determined Overseer replaced by a vulnerable, conflicted chimera girl.

“Why did you buy Skyisle?” I asked, avoiding her question.

“Because I wanted to give it to you,” Kliss admitted. “After Cessna... when I lost my parents, I realized that the only place I truly felt... alive, was here. With you and Delta. Skyisle was dying, its people trapped, their levels decaying. I saw the potential, the hope that you brought with your... science. I saw that you were making a difference, Slava.”

“Anyone can make a difference,” I shrugged.

“As the Overseer of Skyisle I tried to make a difference! Guess what–I failed spectacularly. Unlike me, you were able to disable a Vow at twelve. You brought Aradria from the sky. You’ve seeded the valley with Vitality trees! You’re the most important person on Skyisle, the nail upon which the future of everyone here is hanging. Without your strange arithmancy and knowledge from Earth… your parents and your sister would likely be hopelessly lost. Without you, Skyisle would be slowly devoured by the magogenic fault. Hells, you’ve just stopped twenty seven blood-iron armed Charisma and Foresight augmented mages with… uhhh… remind me, what did you do to make them fall over, exactly?”

“I used an electromagnet,” I said.

“Electromagnet,” Kliss repeated, stuttering over the word. “See, nobody on Novazem can make an electromagnet. Now, stop avoiding the question and tell me WHY you thought it was perfectly fine to sacrifice yourself to pull me from a burning skyship.”

“I didn’t jump into dragonfire as a fragile human,” I tried to defend myself. "I went in as an Astral Phantom inhabiting the ant-mech."

“According to Delta your human body was nearby, the ship could have exploded and a shrapnel could have cut you in half!” Kliss snarled, mouth stretching to reveal inhumanly sharp chompers. "Dragonfire could have overcome the ant-mech and devoured your soul."

“Oh? Would you prefer I lock myself in the ancient Alanian tower behind thick stone walls? I was a prisoner of my own government, kept in the gold cage of Aralsk-7 making death, for nearly three decades!” I shot back. “Taking chances and saving people is something I clearly do. It’s part of my personal penance since one of the viruses I designed managed to kill three girls back in the USSR!”

The ex-Overseer’s sharp expression softened.

“Why do I keep saving you?” I repeated, a wry smile playing on my lips. “Just like you, I was once lost, Kliss. Trapped in a system that demanded obedience and sacrifice, blind to love, unable to appreciate the beauty and potential of the world around me. You, with your rigid adherence to the doctrine of Equality, were a reflection of my own past, a stark reminder of the man I used to be. I am pretty sure I already told you something along these lines…”

I was on a rant now, unable to stop myself.

“If you keep insisting on the burning skyship thing–there is a perfectly rational reason why I didn’t just let you die in that fire. If you died, two of your Vows would have been pulled to Elysium into the embrace of Goddess Equality and then the Gregarius Empire would know everything. They’d come here in great numbers, capture and torture me for my scientific Earth knowledge and use Charisma magic to turn me into a slave! Then I’d end up doing the same thing I did for the USSR–make weapons for an empire!”

“So... you saved me to save yourself?” she asked. “You do realize that the Empire is coming regardless in less than two weeks?”

“I didn’t just save myself,” I clarified, “I’m saving everyone in Skyisle. Inquisitor Jubz and his legion are coming here without a single clue as to what I can really do.”

“I feel like this conversation hasn’t gone in the direction I wanted it to,” Kliss demurred.

“What direction would that be?” I asked.

“She’s milking you for your feelings and compliments, ya dummy,” Delta opened her eyes, staring at us. “It’s what girls do. Now, get outta of the way, it’s my turn on the bliss-pillow.”

Delta shoved me from the lap of Kliss settling there herself.

Kliss blushed, a rippling pattern of red flickers dancing on her face.

“Right,” I cleared my throat, feeling a tad flustered by Delta's blunt commentary. “Compliment…”

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My mind, usually adept at weaving complex mathematical formulae, solving problems and dissecting spells, suddenly blanked at this unexpected challenge.

I glanced down at Kliss, whose orange-tinted face was now as red as a tomato.

“The prismatic refraction of light makes you extra… sparkly?” I muttered.

I evaluated my own words as exceedingly daft. Complimenting her appearance felt irrational, since I designed her look myself in a flow-trance state during which my mind operated a thousand times faster than normally.

“Is that the best you can do?” Kliss arched an eyebrow.

“Uh, why am I doing this again?” I asked, eyeing Delta who was grinning at me like a Cheshire cat.

“He’s clearly not used to talking to girls,” Delta commented. “Give him a break, Lizzy. He’s trying his very best, I’m certain.”

“Could compliments be broken down mathematically, optimized as an expression of Charisma fractal?” I muttered mostly to myself. “Human language is a convergence of…”

“What? No,” Delta scoffed loudly, interrupting my train of thought. “Compliments are like flowers, each one unique and beautiful in its own way. You can’t just reduce them to numbers and equations, Slava.”

“Optimize, not reduce,” I waved her off, returning to my new, shiny idea. “If every book ever written was mathematically broken down into separate tokens correlating to segments of words and how they interconnect and then converged together, I bet it would write excellent compliments as a language model of some sort...”

“Oh no,” Delta lamented, covering her face as if she was embarrassed on my behalf. “I’ve made him go on a tangent about compliment-models.”

“Magical language models,” I said. “The Astral Ocean is full of random gibberish. Perhaps, specifically, if only language was pulled from that gibberish pile and sorted by a constantly running spell into a mathematical array of correlation between tokens, then this array could…”

“You seriously want to make a spell array to construct a magical language model, or whatever, rather than to simply compliment someone from the heart?” Delta lamented. “Slava, why are you like this?”

“Like what?” I asked. “Just think about it! Intelligence can be granted to select objects and creatures through Alanian Golemancy via the creation of a basic phylactery, but this wastes precious, finite resources - soul shards. Maybe, language itself can manifest intelligence through probability mathematics…”

Kliss looked between Delta and me with amusement.

“My god, Slava, you dolt,” Delta huffed, her voice dripping with exasperation. “Watch and learn!”

My twin turned to Kliss, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Lizzy,” she began, her voice softening, “you are a radiant beacon in this dreary world, a shining, warm star amidst the ever-creeping void that seeks to enshroud me. You are a true warrior, a dragonheart forged in the fires of adversity. And even though your hair sparkles more than a waterfall curtain, I wouldn’t have you any other way. You’ll never know how much I truly care for your embrace.”

“Uh-huh, very poetic,” I crossed my arms. “I bet that a magical language model would do better.”

“I dare you to do better, right now,” Delta huffed. “Go on.”

I squinted at her extra-smug face.

The challenge presented to me wasn’t bringing down a dragon and the threat was mere mild embarrassment at best, but Delta’s giddy face pushed me onward.

It was time to cheat. I accelerated my mind with Neurovista and made a mental review of a hundred of my interactions with Kliss, composing something that seemed half decent.

“Kliss,” I began as time resumed its flow. “You are the bravest and toughest person I know. You fought Equality’s Vow again and again and didn’t pull the trigger when you could have. You bought Skyisle for me and for that I am incredibly grateful. You faced death with courage, embraced your transformation with grace, and pledged your loyalty to my alien cause without hesitation. You are a true knight of Skyisle, and I am forever honoured to have you by my side.”

Kliss simply stared at me, orange rings of inner fire flickering behind her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said after a deep pause. She then reached out with her hand to grab at the end of my shirt and pulled me to sit by her side.

“Nooo, he cheated somehow, I know it,” Delta complained.

“Innocent till proven guilty,” I rolled my eyes at her accusations.

Kliss broke out in a fit of giggles, hugging us both.

The noon bell coming from the Church of Equality pulled me out of the exceedingly cosy reverie of familiarity that manifested between us.

“Delta, how did your interrogation of the cultists go?" I reluctantly returned to business.

“They’re mostly orphans from small villages around Agamemnon,” Delta replied with a yawn. “Giovashi scooped them up right after Aradria trashed their homes, ate their parents. The Archpriestess gradually turned the unfortunate kids into her personal army of charmers.”

“Typical cult tactics,” I sighed. “Fear and isolation make fertile ground for manipulation. Did they reveal anything about Giovashi’s plans or whereabouts?”

“Nope,” Delta shook her head. “She sent them specific orders in dreams without actually coming here herself. It seems that she operates across a large portion of Ishikaria. They’re just a bunch of scared girls who thought they were doing Ishira’s work. They’re with dad now - he’s showing them the workshop.”

“Alright,” I nodded.

“What if Giovashi visits them in dreams and demands information?”

“We’ll have to invade their dreams first,” I said. “Maybe incept some kind of mental defenses.”

Something caught my analytical mind, a piece of another puzzle.

“They’re orphans,” I mulled. “Why didn’t the dragon eat them along with their parents? Were they hidden in a cellar or something?”

“No,” Delta shook her head. “Many of them saw Aradria’s face as she swallowed their parents and left them be.”

“Dragons don’t eat children,” Kliss said suddenly.

“What?” Delta asked. “Dragons have a moral compass?”

“Dragons do not have a moral compass,” Kliss shook her head. “Adults smell tastier, have more magic in them.”

“Of course! Children don’t have their system unlocked!” I guessed. “Crystalline matrices which the dragons are attracted to do not form inside humans until their soul-song is unlocked.”

“My soul-song’s totally unlocked,” Delta looked up at Kliss. “Do you feel like eating me?”

“What?” Kliss sputtered.

“Do we seem tasty to you?” Delta pressed on.

“I… erm, uh,” Kliss looked from Delta to me.

Delta's question hung in the air with uncomfortable grace. I watched Kliss squirm, her freckled face flickering with red-violet tones that rivalled her gemstone hair.

“You do smell very tasty if I close my eyes,” she said finally. “But when I look at you, really look at you, past your white hair and blue eyes, you look like an Underside denizen, a squid of the Astral Sea, a thing that would give me severe indigestion. You’re an unsatisfying emptiness which the dragon part of me wants to avoid munching on. So, no… I’m absolutely not going to eat you.”

“I see,” Delta pursed her lips. “What about Georgi and Cassandra?”

“They do smell and look tasty,” Kliss confessed. “But then so does everything else that has magic in it. I’m not going to eat people, Delta, I can control my hunger, it’s already been well sated with Slava's book, gold and blood elk steaks.”

“Hrm. We should investigate this potential branch of research,” I said.

“What research?” Delta and Kliss stared at me.

“A dragon claiming a human into their hoard,” I explained.

Delta and Kliss exchanged a look that was a blend of utter bewilderment and surprise.

I offered Kliss my hand. “Go on - claim me as a hoard item.”

The dragon girl looked at the offered hand, green-orange eyes wide.