Aaron waved a hand dismissively at the old man. “You’re fucking with me. Dragons?”

“History, mythology, folklore, whatever you want to call the collected tales of our kind and others, tend to exaggerate things, but there are kernels of truth. It’s largely biased storytelling, both in our favor and against it.”

“I was expecting something much more Marvel and a lot less Tolkien,” Aaron sighed. “So you’re telling me dragons and all other kinds of stuff are real?”

“Yes and no,” Barrett said with a shrug. “We’re not great big flying dinosaurs who kidnap princesses and sleep on mounds of gold.” He paused. “Well… we may’ve kidnapped princesses from time to time in the past, but that was the politics of war in a bygone era.”

Aaron turned to Alice. “He’s kidding. Tell me he’s kidding.”

The redhead gave him a smile that was almost apologetic and accompanied it with the smallest shake of her head. Aaron tried not to dwell on the gentle sway of her hair or the lines of her neck.

Fuck, I’m really hating this glamour thing, he thought.

Barrett continued, practically musing to himself. “I suppose, centuries back when magic was more flexible, that some particularly magnificent transfigurations were possible. Most of the stories are better looked at as parables and metaphor, though.”

“So no impenetrable scales or fire breath. That sounds like a pretty weak sauce dragon.”

“No scales, per se, but we’re tough as hell compared to most other critters. Plus, a lot of the armor we use incorporates dragon motifs and that usually includes scales. And some drakus can exhale elemental attacks in various forms, but that’s uncommon.”

Assuming Barrett was telling the truth — which Aaron had some difficulty taking at face value, but, honestly, what other explanations fit? — that answered his first two questions. There were plenty of unanswered questions, though, including quite a few new ones.

“Okay, let’s, uh, let’s come back to the fire breathing later,” Aaron said. “Why do I get a strong feeling of familiarity or déjà vu from some people?”

“That’s a mite more complicated, if you can believe it,” the old man said with a chuckle. “Every drakus has two spiritual or metaphysical components that make us what we are — the living, breathing person that exists in the world, and a kind of intangible essence that has bonded with that person.”

The picture was starting to clear up, but it was still far too hazy for Aaron to be confident he was seeing it clearly. He could guess at what Barrett was leaving unsaid, but that felt sloppy and it opened the door to confirmation bias. Better to aim for specificity than jump to conclusions.

“That doesn’t explain how I could have interacted with someone before I met them,” Aaron noted.

“This second essence — the soul of a dragon, if you will — bonds with the living individual that moves through the world. When the body dies, the essence remains, growing in depth for the life it experienced, and can seek a new individual in the world.”

“So it’s a kind of reincarnation?” Aaron mused. “Just my luck I get hit with some kind of inverse tensei whammy instead of getting isekai’d into a world with flying mountains made of chocolate or something.”

“I didn’t understand most of what you said there,” Barrett said, shrugging. “I can address the question about reincarnation, though. It’s not just a transmigration of a single soul into a new, soulless body; it’s one soul finding another, bonding with it, and creating an entirely new spiritual entity. The new, combined entity moves forward, building on itself as it finds new people to form a bond with in each life. There are very few eidolons, other than a drakus, that can live multiple lives.”

“What’s an eidolon?”

“It’s a catch-all for folks who ain’t normal in the same way as we ain’t normal,” Barrett said. “There’s a bunch of similar terms, some with their own connotations and implications, but eidolon is the one I like.”

“What else is out there, eidolon-wise?”

“Most about everything, to some degree. You’ll learn plenty more about all that soon enough. I can’t imagine Mallory won’t see to it you get proper learning so you have some idea of what’s what. There’s more immediate concerns we need to get sorted first, though.”

Shouldn’t I be reeling from all these astounding revelations? Aaron wondered. I’ve got about as much emotional nuance as a young Dan Radcliffe. ‘Yer a lizard, ‘Aarey!’ he says. And I just go, ‘Sounds good.’

Disbelief or skepticism should have made a much stronger showing than just a few half-hearted ‘say sike right nows,’ and instead Aaron found he was not only willing to buy what Barrett was selling, but eager. Aaron wasn’t always the most practical person, but this was beyond the pale. Accepting that all this was true — and Aaron found he hoped it was — it brought him back to the question of what came next.

“So, uh, where is it we’re flying to? And why, I guess?” he asked.

Barrett sucked on his teeth for a second before answering. “You remember what I said about who leads the Drakon?”

As Aaron recalled, they were led by a three-person council or something like that, each with a fancy title in Latin. Aaron was a nerd, but he wasn’t a super-charismatic, hyper-motivated nerd as written by Aaron Sorkin, so his ability to translate Latin — or any other dead language — on the fly was pretty spotty. One of them had been called the animus draconis; animus meant hostility or motivation in English, but Aaron was pretty sure it meant something like spirit or soul in Latin.

“They’re led by three people with Roman titles or something like that,” he mustered.

“Something like that,” Barrett replied. “Anyway, Each of those three positions — the Primus, Cordus, and Animus Draconis — are always held by the same person. Or, more accurately, the position can only be filled by someone who’s bonded with the corresponding essence.”

Talk about nepotism, Aaron thought. That’s a family tree with no branches. Why are fantasy stories always so fucking un-democratic?

“So it’s an inherited position… that you inherit from yourself?” he asked.

Barrett laughed. “Something like that.”

That raised so many questions about the entire process and how it could possibly work, even about how this society of dragon-people functioned. So far, Barrett hadn’t tried to stop him from asking any questions, so he didn’t think he was likely to be boiled in oil for wanting to know more.

Not that boiling a dragon in oil would be very effective, Aaron mused. What would Daenerys say? Oil cannot cook a dragon.

“I imagine this whole reincarnation thing doesn’t come with a tracking app,” Aaron said. “I mean, look at what a pain in the ass it was just for you and I to make contact. It’s got to be way worse for these big important types.”

Barrett nodded ruefully. “It’s not without its difficulties, no doubt about that, and sometimes it takes a while. Quite a long while. And there can be other obstacles for a new drakus, especially one of those three, to reunite with Drakon in a new life.”

“What kind of obstacles?” Aaron asked, intrigued to know more about the world he found himself thrust into.

“For most drakus, it’s a simple enough thing; they start having dreams — dreams of specific people and places — dreams that have a powerful draw to them. The people they dream of are drakus and places they dream of are where we’re gathered in significant numbers.”

“Dreams are a powerful thing, especially for us,” Alice commented.

“Eventually, a fledgling drakus either pursues those dreams in the waking world or they turn away from them entirely. Sometimes, the essence trying to bond with them is released, but other times it becomes dormant, staying with the individual until their death.”

So these dreams aren’t exactly prophecy, like in most fantasy, Aaron mused. It’s more like… clairvoyance? That’s not quite right.

It reminded Aaron of something Barrett had said in one of their dream meetings, something that had been wrong but Aaron hadn’t been able to pin down why it was wrong. He realized what didn’t fit then and, worse, what didn’t fit now.

“You thought I was having dreams like that,” he said. “Except I haven’t.”

Alice turned to him and Aaron forcefully reminded the butterflies in his stomach that, while she might have beautiful eyes, it was as much magic as beauty that was causing them to flutter.

“None at all?” she asked.

Aaron shook his head. “As far as I can remember, up until I met you two, I’ve only had normal dreams. Nothing like what you’re describing.” He paused. “Well, I’ve had that recurring nightmare about being chased through a stone labyrinth for a while, too, for the past several months, maybe.”

Alice leaned in slightly. “Is that what that was? Perhaps your unconscious created a more formidable defense than I’d thought.”

“I think,” Barrett said, “you need to know a little bit of our history to understand how we got where we are.”

And that’s just what Barrett did; he told Aaron a story.

In the late eighteenth century, the Primus Draconis disappeared. Or, it would be more accurate to say, they left the Drakon and were never seen again. Oliver Milton was an Englishman and had been the Primus Draconis for over a century and, one day, he was simply gone. The departure came without warning, but not without explanation.

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Milton left word behind that he believed he had to undertake a kind of solitary pilgrimage to prepare the way for the future of the Drakon — a future that, he said, would be rife with difficulties and offered little in the way of certainty. Even his closest advisors and confidants couldn’t — or wouldn’t — say anything more than that.

The Drakon was not without enemies and it was widely believed among the Drakon that Milton, alone and without resources, would soon be dead. There had been attempts to kill the Primus in the years before his departure, so their enemies had been growing bolder.

So, the Drakon kept a watch for their wayward leader in hopes of lending aid, but they also began to seek the person who would bond with his essence and become the new Primus Draconis.

“The problem,” Alice chimed in, “was oneiromancy.”

“Dream magic,” Barrett said, answering Aaron’s confused look. “We lost access to dream magic.”

The leaders of the Drakon, the Triumvirate of Flame, were distinct because they not only dreamt of others, but their fellow drakus often dreamed of them when they were emerging. These dreams helped the Drakon find each new triumviri in the world and identify them and was one of the primary ways the continuity of leadership gained legitimacy.

“How do you lose access to an entire branch of magic?” Aaron asked.

Oneiromancy, as it turned out, was both fiendishly complex and could only be performed in dreams. That limitation came with a novel disadvantage compared to other magic — it was subject to the same limitations of knowing anything in a dream. Oneiromancy often only made sense in a dream or could barely be remembered after waking. Studying that branch of magic while awake, no matter how rigorously, rarely translated to practical application in the dream and vice versa.

The Drakon had painstakingly forged a grimoire over a long period of time — how long ago and how long it took neither Alice nor Barrett could say — in an attempt to mitigate those obstacles. This tome of oneiromancy, called The Sleeping Dragon, formed a basis of practical knowledge that made exploring dream magic a more reliable endeavor for the Drakon. The crowning triumph of their work, however, was that it contained spells and exercises that allowed performing certain feats with some degree of consistency.

A decade before Milton went into his self-imposed exile, the book was stolen. With the grimoire gone, what mastery of oneiromancy existed in the Drakon slowly faded as individuals who had already learned from it died.

“You’re probably wondering why there was only one copy of the book if it was so damned important,” Barrett said, echoing Aaron’s current thoughts with a bit less profanity.

Barrett continued, “The magic and knowledge contained in The Sleeping Dragon was too dangerous to allow copies to be made. Specific reasons were, I’m told, penned in the grimoire itself. A few passages and rites had been transcribed, which has helped us continue our search for Milton’s successor, but it’s slow going without the full text.” Barrett paused, seeming to weigh his next words. “And those problems have been compounded by others.”

In addition to their efforts being hindered by the loss of reliable oneiromancy, the Drakon had to compete with an aggressive campaign by their rivals to hunt down and eliminate candidates to be the new Primus Draconis. In the more than two hundred years since Milton had departed, the Drakon had only managed to get close to finding and contacting a candidate a scant handful of times.

“Is that what’s chasing me in my dreams? Some magic sent by these enemies?” Aaron asked.

Alice was the one who answered. “I’m not sure. It is something that is trying to find you in the dreamscape and it’s definitely not friendly. I might have thought it was your unconscious manifesting our attempts to make contact if we hadn’t been so close in the waking world.”

According to Alice, closer proximity let her get a sense for the feelings emanating from dreams, not just the content. Whatever hunted Aaron through those nightmares of the stone labyrinth, it didn’t mean him well. That meant it wasn’t likely to stop just because he got on a plane, which raised the question of what he could do about it.

“Continuing to bond with your essence will help and a support structure that reinforces a sense of calm would go a long way, too,” Alice said. “I think we could place a couple of warding items that would provide some assistance, although how effective they’ll be is hard to know in advance — those kinds of enchantments are mostly based on protecting regular people from malicious oneiromancy.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Aaron said, not quite daring to dream of sleep without those ashlar walls and the Conspicuous Pursuer. “Any idea who’s behind the dream invasions and assassination attempts?”

Barrett rubbed his jaw. “Too many to narrow down. I’m not willing to assume it’s just one, either, but the end result is the same — the deck has been stacked against us finding a new Primus for centuries and we’ve rarely managed to take things this far.”

“What’s different this time?”

“Fate brought us a prodigy,” Barrett said, grinning.

In 2015, a drakus found the Drakon through dreams. That wasn’t unusual on its own, but it turned out this young woman was a wild talent — an individual particularly gifted at performing magic without external structure or ritual — and was the first natural oneiromancer to join the Drakon in centuries. Between her innate talent and what could be gleaned from the fragments left of The Sleeping Dragon, the young oneiromancer was able to glean new, but sparse, insights into a new candidate for Primus.

For unknown reasons, those insights came as fragments and flashes of the waking world and never anything within the Dream. The oneiromancer painstakingly pieced these hints together, arduously examining the clues to learn about the candidate’s surroundings.

“Dreams are the most personal part of the mind, if not necessarily the soul,” Alice explained. “They’re naturally guarded against incursion and it’s dangerous to delve deeply into the unconscious of another.”

After more than a year of this investigation, the oneiromancer believed she’d narrowed down the city and state where their prospect could be found. The Drakon sent people to make sure someone would be close at hand in the event more could be discovered about the candidate and to act as a conduit for the oneiromancer’s magic in the Dream.

“The hope was that proximity would empower the magic beyond what we’d been able to accomplish so far,” Alice concluded.

“Well, it worked,” Barrett said, beaming at Alice. “One night, she starts telling us about a baseball game. It was bothering our candidate and kicking up all sorta anxieties, so he’s dreaming about the game over and over.”

Now the story was getting into specifics that veered into territory Aaron had deliberately avoided thinking about. He’d wondered, of course, why they’d gone to so much trouble to track him down and contact him, let alone why assassins were after him and Barrett had brought a small army with him. These were things you weren’t likely to do for some new minion joining your super secret dragon club.

Yet Aaron had consciously kept himself from drawing any conclusions about any of that. It wasn’t that he was concerned about finding himself thrust into a leadership role, but the opposite. What concerned Aaron was how easily he was willing to accept a role like that, how much it just felt right. How often did people in positions of privilege convince themselves not only that it was deserved, but that they’d earned it? That made him feel even shittier about his own reactions.

As long as I’m not some kind of Chosen One, he thought. Bad enough I’m benefitting from magic reincarnation nepotism, I don’t need to be the extra special center of the story destined to save the whatever from the thing in the place. I haven’t done shit with my life to warrant that.

“So we had a city and had roughly narrowed down our search to the central part of town,” Barrett continued. “Now, we were looking for a park with a baseball diamond. There are only four small parks in central Sacramento.”

“And only one has a baseball diamond,” Aaron finished.

Barrett tapped his nose with a huge grin. “Right in one. All we had to do was loiter in the area and wait for a baseball game.”

“Only it wasn’t a baseball game,” Aaron offered, swallowing hard.

“Nope, turned out to be softball,” Barrett conceded. “We had our people sitting on that park all hours, so when folks started showing up yesterday with bat bags, I got over there lickety split and sat my ass right on the foul line.”

Aaron remembered it like it was yesterday. Mostly because it only had been yesterday. The old black man had hunkered down in a shabby folding lawn chair, watching him. After Aaron hit his line drive homer, he’d been deeply on edge and just wanted to get away. So he’d left the park without exchanging more than a handful of words with the old man.

It had nearly turned out very poorly for Aaron; Barrett and the Drakon hadn’t been the only people searching for him. Aaron was almost certain someone had tried to kill him in his apartment that very night, even if he couldn’t remember it in anything but fragments and flashes. Then they’d found him again the next day and took another stab at it, at him. Who they were and how they’d found him were complete unknowns and that was more than a little unsettling.

“So…what are you telling me?” he asked.

Barrett gave him a knowing smile. “I suspect you’ve figured that out, by now.”

Aaron pushed his annoyance aside, at least enough that he hoped it wouldn’t show on his face. He took a deep breath and steeled himself to play dumb, something he hated doing.

“This whole thing is new to me and I’m pretty rattled,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m reaching the right conclusions.”

“The fella who was dreaming about the softball game, the one we’ve been trying to find for more than two hundred years, is our candidate to be Primus Draconis.”

Keeping his face blank, Aaron waited. If Barrett thought he was a little slow, he might feel compelled to spell it out explicitly. After a few seconds, Barrett did.

“That’s you, Mr. Aaron Abrams. You’re the one we believe has started to bond with the essence of the Primus.”

Aaron closed his eyes. When he proved he wasn’t delusional, Aaron had thought he might be in some kind mutant superhero origin story. Confirming not only his sanity but that he had superpowers had been thrilling. But it was nothing — nothing — compared to the rush he felt at Barrett’s words. It was joyous, yes, but there was a bittersweet undercurrent. It was vindication; a refutation of every doubt, every insincere compliment, every biting criticism he’d ever endured.

I’m special, he thought. I am special.

As glorious as it was, it was also terrifying and painful. All this time — all my life! — Aaron had slowly been worn down, let people slowly convince him that he was nobody important and pushing back or going against the grain was proof he was stupid or lesser or… or something. He didn’t know how else to describe it.

That doubt gnawed at him, even now. For the first time in a very long time, there would be expectations of him. Not just from himself but from others, from people who relied on him. That was, perhaps, more frightening than all the assassins lurking in the shadows. He hadn’t done more than coast on his natural talents, intelligence, and creativity for… years.

Even if no one ever said it outright, Aaron had largely accepted that he was a borderline-hapless piece of shit who’d never amount to anything. Now… now he had to wonder if he could meet those new expectations, even exceed them. He wanted to. He desperately wanted to. It was like a chance to reinvent and redefine himself, something very few people got to do once they reached adulthood.

“Okay,” he said, “so I’m the king of the dragons, which are totally real but aren’t actually dragons. Or… I’m supposed to ‘awaken to my power’ and become the king of the dragons.”

Barrett made a waffling gesture with one hand. “Not a perfect summary, especially with the whole ‘monarch’ angle, but you’ve got the general idea.”

“Fine; that’s fine. What, uh, what comes next?”

“It’s like you said — you’ve got to come into your power, complete the bond between your essence and the Primus essence, and prove that you are the rightful successor to the position.”

“Sounds like we’re gonna need a montage,” Aaron said, earning a small laugh from Alice. Barrett either didn’t get the reference or didn’t care enough to acknowledge it.

“Your biggest challenge will be earning the acceptance of the Drakon as the Primus Draconis,” Barrett said. “There are certain things you must accomplish to gain legitimacy as Milton’s successor.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

“Yes, to face your first Tribulation.”

Aaron raised an eyebrow at the old man; he could hear the capitalization on ‘tribulation’ and that didn’t sound great.

Anything that’s a proper noun is either going to be awesome or a giant pain in the ass, he thought.

Regardless of the potential hassle, these Tribulations were an opportunity to demonstrate his worth, to show these drakus people he was the right person for the job.

“Where is this Tribulation?” he asked.

Barrett smiled at him again. “Wyoming.”