“What...was that?” Angela whispers.

“You remember those portals I was talking about? That might have been one of them,” Julia whispers back. “Pretty crazy what that was, I saw a brief image of someplace. Not sure I want to know what’s on the other side just yet, though.”

“I’m grabbing those drives down there. We need to know how far along they are, whatever they’re researching. Hopefully, it’ll give us a bigger picture of their plan,” Drenar moves to a position to drop off the short climb. Getting up wouldn’t be too difficult.

“Drenar, don’t,” Angela hisses quietly. But he’s already flared his wings out and lands whisper quiet on the rocky floor, and then creeps between the rock formations, keeping as low as possible. The lab workers are still talking, and otherwise distracted while he examines the hard drives, laptops and several arcane looking devices glowing yellow and green. They look almost like thumb drives.

No need to be greedy, I’m taking…this drive. It’s a standard SSD drive plastic stamped label titled ‘parsed data’. It’s dated to a span of the last three months.

“Greg, what about the hard drives?” he hears one of them say distantly. “Crosomer said we need to be really careful about how much stuff we transport, it could tip off SAF if they find that we spliced into the leyline with this off-the-network teleportal."

“Grab the critical stuff, leave the rest,” one of them replied, presumably Greg. Drenar ducked back behind the nearest crate instantly. He heard the scuff of feet and small pebbles bouncing across the ground, along with someone shuffling through the devices he’d just been looking at. Someone curses under their breath.

“Dude I’ve seen some freaky stuff in my life as a mage, but holy cats batman, this artifact is something. Nigel, did you review that last experiment video?”

“Of course I did. The Thermisaide field is unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and I dare say Szivak may have been right in her original academic theory about draconic evolution.” Drenar had zero clue what they were talking about, except that it was probably bad news for him and the others in a profound way. “I am eternally grateful that we have elected to pursue a slower and methodical means of study."

"So, the dragons put on cheat mode to adapt their genetics based on an ancient machine learning device, and that led to modern day dragon civilization? Is that what we've got? What about the other Kin?”

"I think that’s too simple. Draconic genetics is incredible, you can see rapid adaptation within a few generations, tops. If Szviak's research is correct, draconian genetics was downgraded several hundred thousand years ago prior to this. This device, along with their own rapid evolutionary response, was an attempt to get back to their baseline. A lot of good it did them, after shooting themselves in the claw with their civil wars and increasing isolation as a kinship species," he muttered. "This device has the ability to create gods or destroy entire global ecosystems. If you can control it properly."

"Okay there Kefka, laying it on a little thick?" Greg laughs.

"From an academic perspective, no," Nigel rebuffs lightly. He shuffles around, and snaps his fingers. "Greg, did you pull the external drive for the latest data? It's not here." A trickle of panic ensues--of all the things Drenar had to grab, he’d managed to snag the one that instantly garnered the most attention!

"What do you mean it's not there? I just put it down ten minutes ago!” Drenar has a dreaded feeling that seeing a human half-way through the awakening process and stealing unethical research just became something to worry about. He hears a rock skitter in the darkness, and someone instantly lets out a gasp. He dares a glance and the man was looking away. “Greg, you hear that?”

“It’s probably bats or rats. Do you have that drive or not?”

“No, I don’t. It’s not here!” the other shouts back. “Someone’s here Greg, this drive didn’t just grow legs and disappear!”

“You’re paranoid! There hasn’t been anyone here in three years besides us and Val and her creepy entourage. Actually I’d prefer anyone but them.” Drenar edges back to where Angela and Julia are waiting, and Julia signs to him that it's clear. The only problem is that there is lot of open ground between him, and her vantage point, and he motions with sign language.

[Tell me when it’s clear.]

“Greg, maybe we should take a look around,” Karl suggests. “Just to be sure?” The other man sighs, and taps a series of buttons that beep, presumably a radio.

“Robespierre, just a question of curiosity, did you already pack the hard drive set and ship them off? We’re missing a few.”

“No. I didn't,” Robespierre utters with annoyance on the nearby radio. “Pair off in twos, I think someone is here besides us. Do not, I repeat, do not start shooting, the last time we set off the artifact, we destabilized some of the support girding in the mine. We hit it with anything with a substantial impact, we’ll be buried here.”

“Non-lethal? Are you serious? We’re running a super covert operation, interlopers have to be dealt with!” one of them shouts, presumably MacKenzie.

“And I’m telling you, there’s other means than permanently silencing people. Do not make the mistakes of those who came before you, or you’re no better than the Conclave,” Robespierre warns. Julia beckons Drenar back to their hiding spot, and he scrabbles up the short climb with an incredible leap–except a rock falls loose and he lands on his back, and lets out an audible shout of pain. A feather floats lazily in the air as he realizes just how much trouble he's in.

“Movement! Stop where you’re at!” he hears one of them shout. The blonde man is closing the distance with a withdrawn fifty centimeter rod–presumably a wand. He snaps to his feet and tenses his wings, grabs the translucent orb and pulls the pin, holding the arming lever secured.

“Nope, everyone stays back, or this little doodad gives a great big shake to a place that would not be kind to shaking,” he responds hastily. The man he recalled as named Karl instantly froze.

“Um, hey guys? I’m no longer feeling so bold with a kid who’s halfway into his dragon form holding a fire orb.” He motions very, very slowly to his shocked friends. “You should really put the safety pin back in that.”

“Nah. I’m good with this,” he retorts back. He hopes that mutual self-preservation will prevail. “All of you, drop your weapons, toss them away, real nice-like. Radios, too. Then we can talk, real nice-like.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Karl snarls. He makes no motion to drop the rod crackling with energy, but he’s also not aiming it right at Drenar. “Do you have any idea the mess you are in?”

“Karl, please do not antagonize the teen with a primed explosive who is likely having a bad time half-way through the Awakening process,” Nigel comments. “He’s not alone, I see two others up on that rock ledge.”

“He’s not going to do jack unless he plans on killing all of us,” MacKenzie menaces, and he points his weapon at Julia and Angela’s spot. Drenar dares a glance in their direction. Julia might be able to dodge, but he’s more worried about Angela. “Guessing you’ve been here long enough to realize what we’re doing is kind of important and time-sensitive.”

“Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot here, everyone puts down their uh, implements of mass destruction, and I’ll put away this hand-chuckable explosive, and we’ll all get along just fine by talking this one out.” Drenar’s attempt at peace is not going well with anyone.

“Yeah, don’t do that, remember the corpse pile?” Angela retorts. He sizes up the situation--no one has gone on the radio yet. They can still egress back the way they came. The problem is, he’s now surrounded by armed mages, an arcane laboratory, cabinets filled with volatile--

The storage room! He steals a look ever so slightly to his right, and notes the chemicals are still unpacked. If he had to plan something desperate, it wouldn’t be a waste of ordinance.

On the other hand, that could be a lethally stupid mistake.

"Alright, first off, we didn't kill those people,” Greg says defensively. “Second off, we’re arcanists, not soldiers here. Everyone keeps talking, and no one gets incinerated.”

“So, who did the killing?” He gets the notion he's not going to like the answer.

“A big bad bitch with literal hellfire in her arsenal of deadly abilities.” Drenar sighs, he realizes he had been too on-the-mark with his previous assessment. “Yeah, that’s my expression every time she murders someone too stupid to live. It’s like, ‘here we go again, Val just merked someone, go get a broom and a pan to clean up the mess'.”

“That should be your sign you’re working for a horrible boss. Join the Radiant Delvers! We have dental!” Julia suggests proudly.

“We do?” Drenar says edgily.

“Absolutely! Our coverage is that I don’t punch you in the teeth if you join team awesome! It preserves smiles and dignity!”

“That’s not how–you know what, let’s have this discussion when I’m not holding a live grenade,” he states with gritted restraint. The four men look at this exchange nervously. “Oh, it is a grenade, right?”

“Fire orb, incendiary burst weapon, typically used for a limited field-of-effect, high damage weapon with low risk of shrapnel and collateral damage.” Greg looks like he wants to punch Nigel. “Got a name, stranger?”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Alex,” he replies forcefully. Technically, it’s the truth–sort of.

Hey, you’re stealing my body, and my name now?! Oh, this is such bullshit!

Drenar winces when the real Alex picks the worst time in the universe to chime in, during waking hours. As if on cue, he feels a rippling pain down his spine, and his wings grow a few more feathers in an itchy, stretching sensation. Nigel tilts his head, as if he’d noticed.

Where the hell have you been?!

Staring at the aether. Then I snapped into reality inside your head, it's been like one giant metaphysical rubber band of perception! And disorienting.

“Oh, that is just…uh hey, you were gonna give me your names, right?” He realizes he just started talking and not to them, which must have been very strange. Nigel looks at him weirdly again before answering.

“I’m Nigel, and no, I don't do last names,” the redhead says curtly. “Alright Alex, let's start this from the top. We’re researchers. We work on very important things. And the important things in this room, are worth more than yours, mine, and everyone else's lives in this entire room by a couple of orders of magnitude–”

“Nigel shut up!” Greg snarled. Nigel gave him an exasperated look while keeping his body motionless.

Alex, check in later. We have problems that might involve me being shot. At least he can relay a message to Alex within the confines of his mind. He gets a single exasperated groan as a response.

“Greg, take a good look at him! He’s halfway through Awakening, and he’s still standing! All our field notes indicate he should be in immense pain and utterly incapacitated by now!” Drenar could almost feel the skin splitting on his forearm, a rash of pain that he fought to keep his arm steady even as the skin cracked, hardened, and turned silver and blue, a few square centimeters at a time.

Oh, fantastic. This literally could not be happening at a worse time! “Kid, you could actually be of some use to us, we’ve got some questions--”

“Nigel, seriously, you're killing me here, they're intruders, and they need to be detained. Not test subjects, not interviewees, intruders,” Greg snaps before diving for his radio. Drenar waves the orb in his direction.

“Put the radio down,” Drenar states forcibly. Greg wisely takes his hand off of it. “First thing I want to know, is how you pulled this off. My Awakening isn’t an accident, is it?”

“How long are you going to hold that thing for?” Karl asks. “Because we can out-wait you, kid. We’re mages.”

“You say that like it makes you special. Last I checked, mages have bodily organs that do not react well to a concussive blast or shrapnel--unless that’s also bogus. Helping hands, anyone? Can a mage eat a grenade point blank? No? No takers?” he asks, glancing at them. Two of them looked like they were sweating bullets, but Karl and Greg are steely eyed. Mackenzie just looks mean. Nigel hovers between anxious and fascinated.

“I really wasn’t serious about using sardonic wit to get us out of this,” Angela hisses angrily. She’s going to murder him later, assuming they get through this in one piece.

“It’s better than his pathfinder persona, where he blitzes in as a whirling dervish barbarian,” Julia replies. Even in this tense situation, she can find a moment for humor. “Now please, tell us how you're making all the cute, fluffy baby dragons!”

“Let's not,” Greg sighs and winces.

“Drenar just remember, you're fire resistant. They aren't.” Angela is throwing some serious shade today. “So this Awakening thing is related to what you’re working on?”

“Correctamundo,” Nigel practically beams, then has an awkward look across his face when Drenar glares at him. “I mean, um, there was a pretty good chance this was going to happen to you anyway, and we didn’t really have time for consent forms, proper medical evaluation, and–”

“Not helping your case, jackass!” Angela snarls. “You know what Drenar, go for it. Let’s light these guys on fire. They used us as an experiment!”

“Hang on. I wanna know. That device you guys blinked out of here, was that it? Some kind of…artifact?” Drenar’s trying to put together pieces, but they’re still not making sense. “What were you planning?”

“Local scale merging of compatible drakensouls with a human host. We cracked the Aether where they’ve been trapped, for hundreds of years! We did it!” he exclaimed.

“Was it called the Stranded Lands?” Drenar asks pointedly. The Aether was a term Alex had used before, when he was speculating. Nigel nodded. Drenar isn’t ready to trust these guys at all, but they know what is happening. Or had worked out something, at least. “I’ve seen it. The dragons trapped themselves in a place between worlds. They obliterated their bodies, but their souls and bound energy remained. Right?”

“How did you see it? No one’s ever seen it!” Greg gasps. He’s forgotten that he has intruders on his hands and is no longer pointing his wand, and lowers it to point to the ground. The spark goes out. “Nigel, what does this mean?”

“That the connection between the host and the drakensoul is strong enough that a stream of consciousness can go both ways? This is completely above my head.” Even Nigel is floored by this revelation that Drenar didn’t even realize was important.

“I don’t know how I saw it. But I did. And I’ve got no clue what you guys did, but you could have hurt a lot of people. Where was the morality, the consent of those you experimented on? How’d you even pull this off?!” Drenar is still stalling, but looking for a way out. Maybe if he could talk them down, they’d just let them walk out. It’s a slim chance, but he’d take that option before fighting his way out.

“He’s not exactly wrong. We’re still figuring out drakensouls, when the rest of the academic world just wrote them off. Yeah, a few trickle in at a time, the process isn’t really well understood. You know what, can we all lower our respective weapons and engage in dialogue, guys? Violence is rarely the best answer,” Nigel offers calmly.

“Nigel, you say another word, and the first crispy corpse is you,” MacKenzie states with deadly intent and turns his wand on Nigel, who is taken aback. “Robespierre is going to be pissed, and now we’ve got a smartass who’s pieced together enough to send SAF our way. Not good for you, or anyone here.”

“MacKenzie, lower your wand. Karl, you, too,” Greg tries to talk calmly. They have no discipline at all, and are even aiming deadly weapons at their own. Only Nigel and Greg seem to have more restraint. “Kid, in about five minutes, we’re due for additional ‘guests’ coming to help us pack. And when they get here, they won’t be understanding. They will view you and your friends as a threat to security. They will kill you, and anyone else you’ve ever talked to, out of an abundance of caution.”

“Yep, there’s your cue, Drenar. Fry first, flee later,” Angela says in a dark beat.

“Greg, could we *not* threaten a potential research subject? We’ve never been able to directly observe the Awakening process in fine detail at the moment of the runaway mana cascade in adolescents!” Nigel spoke quietly. “Kid, I promise you, no harm will come to you, and I’m sure boss would greatly appreciate it if we all just took a step back--”

“Shut it, Nigel!” MacKensie snarls.

“You must get this a lot, Nigel. I mean, academia wasn’t paying off, so you joined the Talons? Great career planning.” Drenar sees a dynamic between these men which suggests they were not a well-gelled crew working together. “Hey, let’s play twenty questions while we’re here, how long between initial signs of Awakening and the big reveal do I get? You know, because it’s going to get mighty uncomfortable here with the limited space.”

“Ah, what you are experiencing is the mana cascade effect as it hits a critical point, triggering the initial transformation. It is also painful to an extent in the late phases as your body structure realigns to draconic, you may require some over-the-counter pain blockers--”

“Gods, Nigel, can you ever shut up?!” Mackensie roars. Intentionally or not, he points his wand at Nigel again. As far as Drenar is concerned, it’s the same as pointing a loaded firearm at someone's face. “We have an operational security breach!”

“Said breach is three teenagers who might be cool with joining a cult!” Julia adds in an almost seamless opportunity.

“You already dress the part, dear,” Angela snarks. Oh, dear Fates, look what I’ve started, Drenar thinks with dread.

"We're not a cult! We are freedom fighters!" Nigel says pointedly.

“Uh, Nigel? We have Val on our team.” Greg laughs in a manner suggesting incapacitating dread.

“Most of us are freedom fighters!” Nigel corrects.

“Still downplaying how much of a murder machine she is,” Greg again points out.

"Some of us try really hard to break historical trends?" he utters like all hope is dying in the world.

"Two words. Davos Renshrak." Nigel looks like he witnessed someone murder a litter of adorable kittens. "Yeah, Nigel, we have some really bad people on our team, and we can't hand wave it."

"Today's freedom fighters are tomorrow's terrorists, said no one ever," Angela replies drolly. Internally, every muscle in Drenar’s body is starting to ache.

"Oh enough of this! How about we melt your friends first?" Mackenzie threatens, the wand glowing a poisonous green now. "Got your attention, kid?"

"Mackenzie, stop!" Nigel screams out and redirects the wand upwards. A bolt of viscous goo materializes and rockets upwards into the ceiling. It hisses and sizzles upon contact with the rock. Everyone takes their eyes off Drenar for just the one second he needs.

“Shots fired, get down there now!” someone screams over the radio–a newcomer whom Drenar hadn’t heard earlier. Nigel is trying to wrestle the wand away from MacKenzie, who clearly wasn’t happy about having his aim disrupted earlier, and bashes the poor man right in the jaw and snaps the wand right at Drenar. Except Drenar is already there, forcing the weapon away–and this time the globule of deadly acid goes wide, impacting the chemical storage glass, where the material hisses and smokes.

*Ting!*

In a moment of utter horror, Drenar forgets for a split second the safety of the magical item, and the orb glows bright red. Mackenzie goes ghostly white in a fraction of a second and screams out, “Throw it now!”

Drenar reacts in a split second and throws the orb the furthest distance he can–which also unfortunately includes the chemical supply area, already weakened by the acid globule. He throws MacKenzie to the ground and covers him with his wings and everyone is diving for cover. Drenar remembers something in an instant, and arches his back like a muscle memory–a weakly shimmering barrier envelopes his body, just as the orb turns bright orange, then white hot.

It’s almost pretty when the orb detonates in a fiery roar, and he sees his probable death in a rush of burning hot incendiary particles.