"SOS, Conf 8" Flashes on my screen from Remus. They must have gotten some interesting information from Vulcan to be calling me into a meeting this fast.

I excuse myself from the room, but people barely notice.

Puck and Hestia are getting into it on fairy circle design. Hestia is trying to apply iterative computer principles to magic, and Puck is having none of it. Four times now they have tried to pull me into the argument, but I'm not getting in the middle of this when they are both spitting mad. Personally, I think applying a new approach to magic may lead to a breakthrough, but they need to come to an agreement first so we can work together.

I run into Lugh on the way. I've always wondered if Lugh and Tolkien knew each other, the parallels between him and Elrond are strong.

"Do you know what this is about?" He asks me as we walk to conference room 8.

"Who got the text besides us?" I wonder out loud.

"I saw Isis heading this way. Inari is getting food and then she will join us."

"They must have gotten new information from Vulcan. I can't imagine it is good news if he is asking for people who were around and remember our first forrages into space."

"I didn't even notice that's who they called. If they are looking for information on that time, why did they call you?"

"Probably to extrapolate the data they expect to get from you. They anticipate a major change in tactics, and I am one of our best tacticians."

"You are not one of our best tacticians, you are our best tactician." He makes a slight detour by one of the snack tables, and steals a full pot of Thor's enchanted coffee and some mandarins. "Just in case the news is as bad as you think it is." He smiles as he hides the stolen goods in his floor length robes. I see the flash of a bottle of elfen wine and he winks at me. "That is in case the news is worse than you fear."

Belenus and Isis are already in the room with Remus and Stata. I move to sit at the table as Lugh distributes his stolen goods to the room, setting a place for Surya and Inari in the process. Stata smirks at his antics, but Remus doesn't even acknowledge him he is so lost in thought.

Shortly after Lugh sits down, Inari and Surya walk in arm in arm, bearing cookies. Lugh laughs, "Glad I wasn't the only one who thought to bring refreshments!"

"Surya insisted on them. 'One can't have a secret meeting without cookies!'" Inari smiles at Surya, and they both giggle at what is presumably an inside joke.

The snick of the lock sobers everyone up quickly. Remus rounds the table and sits at the head. He glares at the rest of us like a dad staring down children who have lied to him about who broke the TV, and says "I don't know how you expect us to come up with a plan to keep us all alive, when you are hiding important information."

Our oldest elders exchange guilty looks. Whatever they have to say is going to cause every plan to change. Every microexpression and twitch could indicate more vital hidden information.

"What do you men?" Inari asks. An attempt to deflect. They don't want to talk about this.

Stata tosses a watch on the conference table. "This is Vulcan's watch, and also apparently a communication device with Ra. Why would Ra need a spy if you separated on the good terms you suggest?"

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The others look even guiltier.

"Ra was spying on us?" Isis whispers, stunned. They didn't expect him to spy. The implications of that are not good. I down my coffee and refill it. The enchanted focus is going to definitely be necessary.

"You have to understand, Ra never really saw humans as anything other than food. When they started upsetting the balance on Earth, he thought eradication was the best course of action. No one could convince him otherwise." Belenus starts.

"Then the signal came," Inari continues, "and he took it as proof for all his fears. He left to restore the balance on another plane, but he firmly believes if humans strike out among the stars, they will destroy the balance of other worlds."

"He thinks of them as a virus," Surya adds, "everyone who went with him felt the same."

"Why did you think the humans sending an intergalactic signal now would lead to a peaceful solution?" I ask.

"To be fair, we did try to stop you," Lugh says, peeling a mandarin.

"You could have easily stopped me by relaying that particular piece of information. Hate and fear changes the calculations entirely. Why didn't you?"

They look guiltily at each other, "I guess we didn't want to reveal how badly we had failed in teaching Ra to be a good person," Isis says. "It is my fault. He was so young, and we were helping the humans become a good, intelligent, sentient race. And I guess he thought I loved them more than I loved him."

"Did you?" I ask. Isis flinches as if slapped. The others glare at me for the insensitive question.

"I loved them equally, but the humans needed more work, so to him it must have seemed so. By the time I realized, the hate had grown. Many of our troubles were caused by him and his friends. They would taunt the humans to war or trick them into famine. It was as if they wanted to prove humans were unable to learn or grow. Any progress they made he would ensure dashed upon the rocks and broke to pieces. Then, they took the opportunity to leave and we somehow still faced an uphill battle to help the humans see the error of their ways."

"They may have left, but they never stopped sabotaging the humans," Remus crossed his arms, "Vulcan burned down the library of Alexandria himself. We never figured out how the bubonic plague happened, or how it only targeted the humans. I would be wiling to bed they had a hand in that too."

"Vulcan was an advisor to the Medici popes," Lugh looks pale and sick as he says this. He sighs, and starts fishing the elven wine out of his robes.

Stata sighs, "So you were all fooled by him. By them both."

"They weren't even friends," Surya laments, "how did this happen? Did they even know each other?"

"They built the ships together. That's when Vulcan would have been radicalized. He was young and Ra doted on him. Made him feel like a genius." Lugh comments.

"He was a genius," Inari points out, "he is the one who designed the method single circle fairy teleportation."

"He did that?" I ask, then turn to Stata, "would he still have that knowledge?"

"He has burned his entire hoard before," Remus says, "It is unlikely he has that information written down, and I doubt he would tell us."

I dont take my eyes off Stata. She is hiding something now, and I need the information. We are stuck in a staring contest of wills, and I will not budge. Not when it could be the difference between our survival and demise.

She sighs, and relents, "A dragon would never burn their hoard. It is physically impossible. But a dragon's true hoard is small. They keep it on them at all times. Vulcan still has that information, in a form that we can probably read, physically on his person somewhere."

Everyone is surprised by that news. We all thought a dragon's hoard was around them in their homes and environments, not something small enough to carry with them.

"We have all his personal effects, would you recognize it?" Remus asks.

Stata shakes her head, "it wouldn't be in his effects. Vulcan likely has the hoard physically inside him. We need to get him in a full body x-ray to find it."

"No problem, I'll organize the x-ray with Samara right now," Isis stands to go to the door.

"You don't understand. Removing a dragon's hoard is a fatal procedure. There is a reason we say you take a dragon's hoard over their dead body. It will kill him."

"If what they say is true, then we don't have a choice. We will need Vulcan's inventions to intercept the response signal the humans are sending, and to evacuate our people to mars." I point out, "either he cooperates, or we have no choice but to take it by force."