Like so many other people in the United States and, indeed, around the world, Aaron had always wanted to visit and live in New York City. It was a dream both born and borne of idealized representations of the place in television shows, movies, books, and music; a dream built on aggrandized lies that everyone knew were lies but still couldn’t shake. It was a dream that grabbed you, held you, and refused to let you let go of it.
The old saying — “If you could make it there, you could make it anywhere!” — was about as much bullshit as the two bedroom apartment any two waitresses could afford in New York as long as they lived in a sitcom. There were plenty of places far, far worse to try existing as a living human being, but getting by in New York was a benchmark in Aaron’s mind and in the popular imagination. It represented economic success and emotional fortitude.
But no one had said whether they were going to New York City or New York state, Barrett had just said New York and left it at that. Given the apparently ludicrous wealth the Drakon had demonstrated in his brief time interacting with them, Aaron was inclined to think New York City was the most likely.
He didn’t want to get his hopes up, though, because what if the Drakon were super bourgeoisie and based themselves in some resort in the Catskills or a posh suburb like Nassau and Westchester counties? What if they operated — *shudder* — upstate?
Definitely best not to get my hopes up, he thought.
Once Aaron was out of the lake, the helicopters swiftly carried them back to the airport. Barely half an hour after Aaron had emerged from the water, they were back on the jets, in the air, and flying east. Probably. Aaron had no way to tell for sure since the sky was still dark and dawn was hours away.
A few minutes after taking off, a man in slacks and a vest emerged from the door at the rear of the plane’s cabin carrying a stack of small binders. Aaron hadn’t seen the man among the personnel the Drakon had with them, but he got that same vaguely familiar sensation other drakus could evoke. It was weak, but it was there.
Will that feeling always be there, or will it fade into the background? he wondered.
The small binders contained menus, not unlike those you’d get at a higher-end restaurant, and they were absurd. It included standard fare like soups, salads, and sandwiches, but also ridiculous extravagances like Kobe steak, lobster, and caviar. Aaron didn’t know how the jet, even as large as it was, could accommodate a kitchen that could serve so many different foods and he couldn’t begin to calculate the sheer cost.
“Just how much money does the Drakon have?” Aaron asked incredulously.
“About half,” Tia replied with a smirk.
That got a chuckle from Barrett, but Mallory chastised the young woman.
“Hyperbole is quite unnecessary, Miss Kellogg,” he said.
“I’m barely exaggerating,” she replied, unfazed.
Whatever the economic reality of the secret society’s finances might be, Aaron couldn’t pass up an opportunity to try Kobe beef. He’d never spent more than fifty dollars on a meal, so a little indulgence wouldn’t damn him to capitalist hell. Still, he ordered the expensive steak with a twinge of guilt at the excess of it.
Everyone’s order came out improbably fast, even considering almost everyone but Aaron had gone for a salad, sandwich, or something equally light. Nobody else seemed weirded out by it so there must have been some kind of magic at work.
The beef was unlike anything Aaron had ever tasted. He’d never been one of those guys who obsessed over steak or whiskey or cars — steak was just okay in his experience, not something to build your personality around — but the tenderness and flavor of the Kobe beef was quite excellent. It wasn’t anything he would tweet about, though.
Maybe I just have really plain taste buds? Aaron wondered.
He preferred mayo to mustard on his sandwiches, vanilla ice cream suited him just as well as, if not better than, the richest dark cacao gelato, and he wasn’t especially fond of spicy food. The number of arguments he’d had with people over not being impressed by whatever particular dish they happened to love was… well, it was a big number.
“So is the whole dragon thing like being a salesman in the 50s or 60s, just jetting across the country all the time, maybe reminiscing about the past over a glass or five of scotch?” Aaron asked.
Tia answered before anyone else, gesturing at the two old men. “These two are basically stay-at-home dads and Alice and I are the rowdy kids they’re looking after.”
“It’s not that travel is out of the question,” Barrett said, “but Alice is less militarily-oriented than my usual protégés and Tia is in college.”
Mallory took a sip of tea. “I would add that finding a candidate for Primus Draconis are very special circumstances that do not often come up.”
“Barrett said it’s been two hundred years since the last one disappeared and you’ve only managed to find a few candidates since. Can you tell me more about that? I’d like to know about the other Tribulations, too.”
“I was called to the Drakon two years after the last Primus Draconis disappeared, so I can tell you a fair bit about what transpired and Barrett, who makes a hobby of studying history, can fill in any major gaps,” Mallory said.
Then the old two gave Aaron an overview of what had transpired to the best of their understanding.
The last Primus Draconis had been an Englishman named Oliver Milton. Born in the early 17th century to a nominally wealthy family, Milton parlayed his family’s modest means into a lucrative corporation, dealing largely in textiles. In 1637, just before his thirtieth birthday, he was located by the Animus Draonis of the time, another Englishman named Edmund Stewart, and was installed at the head of the Triumvirate of Flame soon after.
“That’s a lot of Englishmen,” Aaron noted.
Barrett nodded. “The essences of the Triumvirate seem to gravitate towards citizens of powerful nations and empires. Over time, we started springing up in more tightly packed geographic regions as new global powers emerged.”
Once confirmed as the Primus Draconis, Milton proved himself powerfully insightful with an eye towards the future. He pushed the Drakon to invest resources into novel technologies — telescopes, adding machines, steam power, and clockworks, among others — as well as other commercial interests.
Initially, there was fierce resistance among the Drakon. Changing from a model of insular self-interest towards collective endeavors was practically unknown to the drakus, but the critics became converts when the Industrial Revolution began less than a century later. The dividends came quickly and were astronomical.
Investment and mercantilism weren’t the extent of Milton’s foresight — he was one of those rare few eidolons possessing a degree of real oracular talent. Although many drakus were capable of developing access to memories inherited from the essence that had carried through their previous lives, premonitions and prophecy were exceedingly rare among them. Even more so than other Creaturae.
“Inherited memories?” Aaron asked, hearing something that sounded very much like what he’d experienced in the lake.
“It’s not uncommon for drakus, after having lived through so many distinct lives, to learn to plumb the depths of knowledge and experience they gained in previous incarnations,” Mallory said.
“It’s usually not direct knowledge like the way you can look back on the day you got your first car, but more like remembering something you heard about before, or even a feeling of inspiration or intuition,” Barrett added. “Some particularly gifted drakus develop ways to actually explore the inherited memories more thoroughly.”
That last part sounded very much like what Aaron had gone through in the lake, although he had experienced the memories almost like he was living them firsthand. If each past life or whatever hadn’t been doing basically the same thing in the same place, though, it would have been an indecipherable mush.
Milton, as far as Barrett or Mallory knew, had very little ability to draw on inherited memory, especially compared to his predecessors. It was thought to be something of a trade-off for his prescience.
He used his gift of foresight to prepare the Drakon for a future only he could see; one that, according to the messages he left behind, would contain a great deal of upheaval and strife and had the potential to end in calamity. His disappearance and the steps he’d taken prior to them were, according to those same messages, meant to prepare the Drakon for that turmoil.
The most contentious of those preparations was relocating the Drakon’s base of operations from Europe to North America — New York, specifically — which he enacted the year after The Sleeping Dragon had been stolen from a stronghold in the Sudeten Mountains.
Even centuries later, this decision was a source of great disruption among the Drakon, with many drakus in Europe and the so-called Old World pushing for more independence from the Triumvirate in the absence of a new Primus Draconis.
“I found the Drakon two years after Milton began his abrupt pilgrimage,” Mallory said. “Although I never met him, I believed in his vision and have striven to see it followed.”
For Mallory, that meant convincing Barrett — and four other predecessors to the position of Cordus Draconis — to stay true to what they knew of Milton’s vision. This kept the Drakon from fracturing entirely, but the schism with the Old World continued to be an obstacle they couldn’t fully overcome. The relationship was cordial and mostly cooperative, but the drakus across the Atlantic were eternally resistant to following the directives of only two of the triumviri.
“That’s why we’ve been trying so hard and put so much focus on finding a new candidate for Primus Draconis,” Barrett said. “On both sides of the ocean.”
Although it was completely unknown when, exactly, Milton had finally died, the Drakon first began seeing signs of new candidates half a century after his departure. In the years since, at least a dozen candidates had emerged; the Drakon had only managed to make any sort of contact with five and only one had made it into their protection.
That individual had failed the first Tribulation.
That brought a few pressing questions Aaron had to the forefront of his thoughts and he hoped Barrett and Mallory could offer some insight on the subject. It wasn’t that he was nervous about the Tribulations, exactly, because he had taken to the idea that he was the new Primus Draconis surprisingly quickly. That didn’t mean he was entirely without doubt and the usual, constant background noise of a more general kind of anxiety. A little insight, even reassurance, could go a long way in the face of the unknown.
“That’s something about a vault, right? How did they fail? What happened to them?”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Escaping the vault,” Mallory said. “It is a task ostensibly as simple as the Tribulation you just faced, entering the depths. A prospective Primus need only enter a vault, after which it is sealed, and then must escape from it.”
“What’s the catch?” Aaron asked.
There were two catches, as it turned out. Much like the Tribulation in the lake, the details of what had to be done to succeed were known only to the Primus Draconis, who had never shared them with others. There was, however, a general understanding that the candidate would have to face some form of obstacle or challenge in the vault, likely one of great personal significance.
“Although we don’t know the details, many of our predecessors have left records of Tribulations they had witnessed,” Barret said, then softened his tone. “The testimony and reports are fairly consistent, suggesting it may be a traumatic experience.”
Mallory nodded. “It is understood to be a test of mental fortitude, one that can only be overcome by the willpower innate to the individual. It is thought not to rely on the essence of the Primus Draconis as much as it does your personal mettle. The vault is, however, locked to that specific essence; anyone else attempting the Tribulation would have no hope of success.”
“My own little Dagobah, I guess,” Aaron muttered, mostly to himself. “So what happens if someone fails?”
Mallory, in his usual charming and reassuring manner, had the answer. “Failure would mean death and we will be forced to resume our search.”
Barrett, being both more personable as well as an amateur historian, had more insight to offer on the subject that wasn’t so dreary.
Until recently, it had been assumed that failure in the vault meant death for the individual attempting it. It had only been an assumption because no one had ever failed the Tribulation — until the single candidate the Drakon had made contact with in the early 90s. They had gone into the vault and never emerged.
According to Mallory, when the vault opened again, they discovered the candidate hadn’t just died, they had disappeared completely, leaving behind no remains. The theory that arose from this grim discovery was that the vault had absorbed their physical body then released the essence of the Primus to seek out a new bond.
“It was really significant because, prior to that, the only Tribulation we know a candidate ever failed was entering the depths,” Barrett added.
Mallory nodded. “Quite so; the Tribulation of the vault has other requirements, as well. The Drakon is to have provided no training in magic or mental defenses to the candidate. As we understand it, this is so that the challenge remains a test of the candidate’s own personal mastery and self-possession rather than the resources of our society.”
Aaron was ahead of the curve there — he had only just learned that magic and such existed, so he was completely untrained and unaware of how all of that worked. Except he spotted a potential problem in what Mallory had just said, one that could lead to his untimely death.
“What happens if a candidate goes into this vault thing and they have already learned how to perform some magic on their own?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Ah, you must be thinking of an example like our young Miss Carroll,” Mallory said.
Aaron’s eyes darted to the beautiful woman gazing out dreamily at the night sky. Alice had been one of the examples that occurred to him. Her glamour left Aaron spending so much attention on not paying attention to her that she was never entirely quite gone from it. Her use of magic before she learned she was a drakus had jumped straight into his mind. But that wasn’t the only one.
Haven’t I been doing my own kinds of unintentional magic? he wondered. Maybe enhancing my strength doesn’t count, but Alice suggested I might be subconsciously doing some kind of dream warding to protect myself. Will that cause this vault to liquify me or something?
“It did come to mind, since I’m told she had some kind of natural magic before she ‘awakened to her power,’” he said.
“It is not a common occurrence, but it does happen on occasion. My own protégé, Miss Kellogg, was one such individual, as was Miss Carroll, as you know,” Mallory said, gesturing to Tia and Alice in turn. “Why do you ask?”
Aaron took a short breath. “It might be nothing, but Alice said there was a chance I had been shielding or hiding myself in my dreams. I don’t know if that will be a problem with this vault, but it seems like a good question to ask.”
“That would be irrelevant to the trial,” Mallory said, after some thought.
When the elderly man wasn’t forthcoming with any more details, Aaron made a circular gesture with one hand to indicate he should continue and asked, “Why?”
Mallory grumbled and sighed a little, as if unused to being asked to explain himself. “There are two reasons any potential dream warding you have done by instinct would be irrelevant. The first and most important is that oneiromancy is a defense not of the mind but of the dream. The second is that draconic magic is tied to the draconic essence, which is sufficiently different from more general magical efforts as to require significant adaptation by the practitioner, as both Miss Kellogg and Carroll could attest.”
“I’m starting to feel like I’m going to have to balance a tack hammer on my head,” Aaron sighed.
No one seemed to get the reference, which was a bummer for Aaron. Granted, it was a pretty obscure reference to a movie he saw when he was very young, but it had become a cult classic. Or so he’d heard.
As he looked around the cabin for his people — his nerdy, obscure reference people — Aaron was disappointed. Barrett and Mallory clearly didn’t know the quote, Alice hadn’t been distracted from gazing out into the rapidly lightening sky, and Tia was being snarky at her tablet.
Tia saw him looking for signs of recognition in the cabin and gave him a smirk and a wink. She dressed the part of a 90s girl who would have seen Mystery Men — very Janeane Garofalo — but she was a few years younger than Aaron, so it was possible she was just humoring him.
Humoring me is better than pitying me and my random references, he thought. At least it sounds like I won’t dissolve into nothing in this vault, so that’s a good sign at least.
“What comes after the vault? Something about a sceptre, right?” he asked.
Barrett, once again, had the low-down and offered Aaron his insight.
Retrieving the sceptre, the third and final Tribulation, was more complicated than just picking up some fancy gold stick from a velvet-lined chest made of mahogany and gold. While the sceptre was a symbol of office and had all the ceremonial significance attached to it one might expect of such an ancient organization, the Tribulation was meant to prove the same thing each of the others was — that the incoming Primus Draconis was the true and rightful successor because they already had been the outgoing Primus Draconis in a previous life.
“So all three of these tests accomplish basically the same thing?” Aaron asked, bewildered at the redundancy.
“Retrieving the sceptre is unique among them as it cannot be accomplished without calling on your inherited memories,” Mallory said.
“That one gave old Oliver Milton quite a bit of grief, way I read about it,” Barrett said with a chuckle.
“Because he was bad at accessing inherited memories, right?”
Barrett tapped his nose with a finger. “Right in one.”
The sceptre, which Aaron was surprised to learn didn’t have a fancy name with a dragon motif, was meant to be carried by the Primus Draconis at all times. When they died, the sceptre would be magically transported to a specific place chosen by the Primus beforehand — a place known only to them.
Their successor had to dredge up the memory of where to find the sceptre, then go get it. The retrieval would further bolster the legitimacy of the latest scion of the Primus Draconis and provide them with a symbol of office.
If the memories are anything like they were in the lake, Aaron thought, then I’m screwed if this stupid stick doesn’t go to the same place every time.
The overwhelming mélange of memories he’d experienced during his most recent Tribulation would have been all but impossible to derive details from if every memory hadn’t been basically identical. He kept that concern to himself, for now, because a practical problem presented itself in light of this new information and he couldn’t stop himself from asking about it.
“How the hell am I supposed to carry around a big gaudy mace all the time? We don’t exactly live in an age of sword belts and cloaks, anymore. Do I have to, like, permanently camp out at some year-round Ren Faire?”
“That is easily remedied,” Mallory said. “Should you succeed and acquire the sceptre, we will perform a simple rite that bonds it to you as a talisman. Once bonded, you’ll be able to transform the sceptre into a small marking on your body at will.”
“...can I do that with a giant mallet?”
Mallory’s face scrunched up with bewilderment at the question, but Tia laughed.
“It’s not a hammerspace,” she said, “but dimensional storage is a thing.”
“Like bags of holding?”
“Yeah, but adapted to the times to be more discreet. There’s purses, backpacks, messenger bags, fanny packs, and all kinds of stuff. Enchanters are always trying to make newer, better versions, too.”
A world of possibilities opened up in Aaron’s mind. Magic items!
He wanted to know more — he had to know more; it was his nerdly duty — but now might not be the best time to ask for a Sharper Magic Image catalog. Still… could there be a ring of protection in his future? Or invisibility? Perhaps boots of striding or — be still, his nerdsome heart — a wand?
Set aside the nerd boner, suck up the drool, and focus on the task at hand, he told himself.
Of course, Aaron had no earthly idea how to do that — the Tribulation he was jetting towards was a literal mystery box. From what had been said so far, he had to go into some big vault, confront his own figurative Darth Vader, and overcome it through sheer pluck. He couldn’t really think of any way to focus on overcoming the Tribulation without more information. He’d already exhausted the questions that occurred to him he thought Barrett and Mallory could, or would, answer.
As if the upcoming Tribulation in the vault weren’t enough to worry about, Aaron was starting to fret over what it might be like to experience a flood of dissimilar inherited memories for the Tribulation that came after. He had experienced a deeper connection with those memories of the past than most drakus, so it stood to reason he would need to gain greater control over that connection to filter through the information. Again, though, that was a train of thought that was putting the cart before the proverbial horse and something to think about after he survived the day.
Aaron sat back in his chair, trying not to think about all the things that could go wrong and doing a piss-poor job of it. It was a strange thing — knowing you were the person everyone thought you were, with empirical evidence and everything, and struggling with impostor syndrome anyways. Then again, that was exactly how impostor syndrome worked, so maybe it wasn’t all that strange.
The vague and mysterious nature of each Tribulation added to the problem, since each was made up of more unknowns than knowns. They were all couched in a kind of generically poetic language, the kind of riddle-talking that would turn out to be accurate but with insight that would only seem obvious in hindsight. Aaron liked explicit, hard information; he liked to see the edges of things so he could know the shape of them.
What does it say about this hidden world of magic, Aaron wondered, that dragon-souled sorcerers use the same shapeless, pseudo-mystic gobbledygook that science fiction and fantasy writers do when they can’t explain how shit in their world is supposed to work?
Aaron’s thoughts were chasing each other in circles, but they shuddered when a small hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up and the thoughts crashed into each other completely, becoming less of a circle and more of a jumbled wreck of incoherence when he found Tia standing over his shoulder, looking down at him.
Tia was gorgeous and finding her so close threw Aaron’s brain into the disarray that only the perennially awkward and lonely ever truly experience. Tia probably wasn’t dripping with a magic love-me whammy like Alice, so her proximity wasn’t quite as disruptive to coherent thought, but it was still jarring.
Magic or not, try to be cool, idiot, he scolded himself.
“Uh, what’s up?” Aaron said, the very model of urbane eloquence and sophistication.
Inwardly, Aaron was wincing. Outwardly, he tried to project cool confidence. Tia was beautiful, but she was also funny and filled to the brim with snark. He wanted to impress her almost as much as he didn’t want her to make fun of him. He appreciated her sense of humor — from what little he’d seen of it — but that didn’t mean he wanted to be the focus of it.
Not until we know each other better at least, he corrected.
“You should grab a seat at one of the windows on the left,” she said. “You might enjoy the view.”