"A Mu'drakker commands the swarms of Mu'drakk, you said?" Aiela clarified, turning towards Tom, who'd been awkwardly silent at the side as they'd spoken. "And Sally over here is loyal to you?"

"That's right," Tom said. "They would die for their Mu'drakker if she ordered it. She produces more and healthier eggs than the regular Mu'drakk. Most Mu'drakk are sterile, actually. And I don't know if I'd say Sally is loyal to me, exactly, but she does listen to me and consider me a friend."

"Do they only eat meat?" Aiela asked.

"No, they eat fruits and vegetables fine, though live prey is preferred."

Aiela smirked, turning back to Venza. "We could have dozens of these things adding to House Greyfield's fighting strength, all loyal to a Mu'drakker."

"This seems like a lot of hassle for what are essentially war hounds," Venza protested.

"A hundred war hounds wouldn’t have put up as much a fight as Sally and a handful of her brood did against us," Aiela answered with a scoff. "Besides, you're looking at this wrong."

"Then help me look at it right," Venza said.

"I hate to admit this but monsters are superior to human mages in quite a few ways," Aiela began. "As you saw in our battle, most of them have greater physical ability or durability than we do. Most mages are also untrained in close quarters combat, but if a foot soldier tried to engage one of these-" Aiela trailed off, letting Venza imagine it.

"Right," Venza said. "Individually, these would fare better than a human mage of the same magical caliber. No need for weapons or armor, either.”

“Aye,” Carver said reluctantly. “I’m not sure Roeder and I would’ve managed these without the Entanglers.

Aiela nodded. "Also, that's only looking at it based on what they can do now. Remember, I will be there to oversee this little project. With Earth and Water spheres and some training, they could prove very handy for supporting our soldiers in combat. At the minimum they could supply water to our forces, but if things work out the way I imagine, these mud drakes could provide physical protection, covering fire, maybe even cobble together defensive structures on the front lines."

She could see Venza starting to lose the internal debate with herself. Over the many years she'd known Venza, she'd learned some of the redhead's quirks. One of them stood out whenever Venza would discuss military strategy and history: Venza had a fascination with sieges. Whether it was attacking or defending a fortified position, the subject always made her eyes light up.

Venza's hand cupped her own chin in thought. "True. If they could be taught to erect walls or dig and fill moats in a hurry they would be a great war asset."

"And they could easily be fed by Astamarr's overabundant crop yield," Aiela pointed out.

"The abundant crop fields that were your doing," Venza pointed out.

Aiela shot her a look. Venza always did this when someone was willing to listen. "Can we not?"

"Er, sorry. What's going on?" Tom asked.

Aiela glared at him and he nearly jumped on the spot.

"Oh, it's this old story," Venza began, prompting Aiela to turn her glare towards her instead. "The Grand Cleric in Serian wanted to know why Verdeholm's farms suddenly turned so prosperous."

"They sent priests with Nature Spheres but couldn't figure it out," Aiela said reluctantly. Might as well get it over with.

"All they managed to gather was a mysterious little girl had been going around people's farms," Venza continued. "The Temple concluded the girl was actually a nature spirit of some sort, going around blessing the crops. But it was actually-"

"Yes, yes, it was me," Aiela finished for her, deadpan. "I am the mysterious Child of Fertility."

Venza started laughing, prompting Aiela to sigh.

"Will this ever get old for you?" she asked, shaking her head. "Can we get back on topic?"

Venza managed to rein herself in after a few seconds.

"I see what you're trying to go for," Venza said. "But it's too risky to put our citizens' lives at Sally's whims, no?"

"Who said we'd be putting them under Sally's command?" Aiela asked, smirking.

"I don't understand," Tom said. "Do you have a Mu'drakker? But if you did, you wouldn't ask so many questions about them."

"I don't, but I can hatch one," Aiela said. "Then I can make it my Familiar, bound to my will by magic. The rest would obey by proxy. An army of monstrous mages at my command."

“At my father’s command,” Venza reminded her. “To protect the territory.”

Aiela smiled sheepishly. “Right. Sorry.”

"You can't just hatch a Mu'drakker," Tom reminded her. "There's about a one in a thousand chance. Well, I suppose you could grab a thousand eggs and wait until one came out, but-" Tom trailed off.

Aiela's smirk didn't falter. She played these games with Venza sometimes, where she would lead a trail of metaphorical bread crumbs for her to follow. Aiela had brought up her work on the fields of Astamarr, and not just because it would help them feed the Mu'drakk.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Modify Gene," Venza said, nearly smacking herself in the head when she realized it. The answer earned her a grin from Aiela.

"Ten points for House Greyfield," Aiela said. "That's exactly right."

"You really think that would work?" Venza asked. “I know you’ve used the spell to alter the plant seeds, but-”

"I'll need a couple of things," Aiela said, "But most importantly, I need eggs."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

It must have been something in their genes. That had been Aiela's first thought when she heard only one in every thousand Mu'drakk grew into a Mu'drakker. If there had only ever been one Mu'drakker, it could have been chalked up to a random freak mutation. That wasn't the case, though. If it happened with recurring, if exceptionally rare, frequency within the species that meant Mu'drakk had some sort of binary switch in their bodies that determined whether they would stay Mu'drakk their whole lives or ascend into something greater. All she needed to do was find it and figure out how to flip it on.

Aiela kept these thoughts to herself as she inspected the egg clutches. They'd been submerged under the water, but her Hidden made gathering them on the riverbank a simple enough task.

She had no idea why she both knew so much and yet so little about the tiny building blocks that made up life, but she did. Oma certainly knew nothing about it, and not a single soul she'd met since leaving Rantori seemed to know either, but the knowledge was there in her memories. She just wished she knew why.

Sometimes, it felt like this life was a dream and she really belonged somewhere else. She remembered the time Lucius or Vosmer (she couldn't remember which) suggested she might have been a long lost relative of the royal line of Lilium. Their royal family seemed to pass magical talent and knowledge down the bloodline, so perhaps-

Aiela pushed those thoughts away. They weren't relevant for picking an egg.

"What are you using as a basis?" Venza asked. "For selection, I mean."

"The most important thing I can't alter," Aiela answered. "Spheres."

"I thought all monsters of one species had the same spheres," Venza said.

"A common misconception," Aiela said. "All monsters have spheres by default, determined by their species. Technically, humans have a default value as well, only the default number for humans is zero. However, sometimes humans are born with affinities for one or more spheres."

"Mages," Venza said.

Aiela nodded. "Right. Some people are born gifted. By that logic, most monsters are non-mage equivalents of humans, except they actually do have magic, if a bit basic."

"So you're saying monsters can have mages, too?"

"In that they can acquire additional spheres at birth and as they go through life, yes. That's what I'm looking for."

Sally's clutch wasn't very promising, however. Most of the unhatched eggs only had the default 'one water, one earth, half nature' affinities. Ironically, one of the live Mu'drakk had an extra fire sphere, which Aiela herself didn't have, but using Mutation on something that had already grown was courting disappointment. That was why she hadn't used the spell to cure William all those years ago: The results tended to be far too unstable. A master of Nature magic could likely do it, but that would take more than a lifetime of growing her power.

"Aiela, look here!" Venza said, inspecting a separate batch of eggs. Aiela hurried over, wondering what the fuss was about.

She'd needed to double check to ensure she wasn't seeing things, but the egg possessed not one, but two extra spheres: Fire and Death. It had a full Nature sphere, too, unlike most of its kind.

"It's a good find, no?" Venza asked.

"It is," Aiela answered, though she kept the rest of her thoughts to herself.

Fate was rarely that kind. Oma had warned her about those born with extraordinary gifts: About half were fated to die young, or suffer in other ways. Reading Fate was something as foreign to Aiela as Genetics were to her Oma, but she gave Oma the benefit of the doubt in these matters. Aiela was, after all, only a teenage witch still learning about the world whereas Oma Mala had the knowledge and wisdom of centuries.

It made her wonder what kind of fate Oma had spared her from when she'd taken her in. What was the reality she'd been pulled from, that she could live this dream in Verdeholm? The old woman had never been willing to tell her, saying some things were best left unknown.

"Gene Mapping," she muttered, and the egg's gene sequence came alive in her mind's eye as a heads-up display. As usual, Oma had been right. This particular specimen had a deformity within it. She couldn't say what it was, but she'd checked enough of them to know this egg wasn't normal.

Unless, of course, a benevolent mage who could alter creatures intervened before the creature could hatch.

"This one," she declared.

Venza beamed at her. She knew the Greyfield Heir had a small inferiority complex when it came to her. Being a mage but not being able to actually use magic would have upset anyone, but Venza managed to contain it.

She glanced at Sally, the wounded Mu'drakker. She’d stirred from her slumber but remained in a resting position to begin healing her wounds. Anyone who could injure such a creature with her bare hands from several meters away had little to feel inferior about, in Aiela's opinion, but she could sympathize with Venza's plight. No. Venza’s problem was that the people who mattered in her life didn’t acknowledge her.

Mustering as much enthusiasm as she could, she said "Thank you," to her friend of six years. "Now, I suppose I have to clear the dam."

There was a soft hiss from the giant reptile. Sally turned and made her way downriver, towards where the earth had been propped up to stem the water's flow. Aiela followed. Who was she to refuse if Sally wanted to make things easier for her?

Monster magic was a fascinating subject. Like human mages, they all had the inner workings needed to convert Mana in the air into a desired effect, but lacking speech and the sophistication that came with language, their brand of magic was both quicker and more limited in scope.

Well, perhaps not much quicker than Aiela's, but for other humans who needed to chant their spells? Certainly. It did come at the cost of not being able to weave more complex spells together, but truthfully, most humans couldn’t manage that, either.

Aiela watched as Sally stopped in front of the earthen wall. Similar to how she had in their battle, the giant reptile sat back on her hind legs, raising her two forelegs into the air before clapping them together. As the sound resonated through the passage, the wall of earth started to crumble.

It was almost like watching a mix of her and Venza's talents. Casting with no words, but instead using one's body to shape the spell. It was not a technique she was unfamiliar with, being able to cast basic spells without speech herself, but it still fascinated her.

Not willing to be outdone by Sally, Aiela focused her mind on the weakening wall. She raised her right hand forward and channeled Mana. As she brought her hand down as if flattening dough, the wall slowly sank until it no longer blocked the river.

Sally turned around, and while a huge lizard towering over her made her a little nervous, Aiela saw Sally nod her head in approval before going back on all fours. Maybe Tom had been right on the money. Sally seemed a gentle giant, only lashing out to protect her eggs.