Julia is cradling a cup of coffee while Drenar lays out the details of the dreams and what happened to his arm. She’s still rubbing her hand nervously, hoping she doesn’t accidentally fry him. If that elemental plasma could slag a microwave, she doesn't want to find out what it would do to something…organic. The book is still open on the table. Those dragons keep staring back at her--their existence not a possibility, but a probability of wonder and excitement.
This is crazy to the max. Weird prophetic visions–or maybe linked realities? How is this all possible? For now, she simply listens to him describe the dreams, along with the sketches he’d been able to recall from memory. They definitely help visualize some of it as he rapidly traces them out. He’d been unable to recall all the dragons he’d seen the first night–it had been too chaotic to get a good look, but that ominous void sounds unsettling. That sketch he makes, of a hole in reality while the world crumbles around him--she shudders to think what the dragons were doing just orbiting around it. Had they been trapped there?
She doesn't have long to ponder it before he pulls out the feather, and her eyes widen. “You mean to tell me you just ignored it at first?”
“Well, I thought that it was from my stuffed bird I did in scouts?” It sounds more like Drenar has been in reality denial, but she keeps silent on that notion. She picks it up and examines it.
“Alright, first off, this is super light, and it's super strong, too. This quill looks like it's the base of a scale, almost, and there's a slight metallic look to this central spine. Jeez Drenar, you ignore humanity’s greatest find ever, and you stuff it in your bag as an afterthought!”
“C’mon, anyone would have thought it would be too crazy to be true!” he protests.
Slightly less unsettling is the fact that Drenar had been testing stuff on his scales like an idiot without a proper lab setup. “Let me get this right. You tried to stab through them. And you couldn’t?” she echoes. “You have a history of accidents with knives, Drenar, that was pretty dumb.”
“Don’t remind me,” he sighs and rubs at his wristwatch almost reflexively. “I couldn’t pry one out, I thought if I could chip or cut one off, that might be easier, but it’s like…honestly the best analog I’ve got? They function like living steel.” She takes the magnet again and taps it against the set of scales, and they stick. Then she does it again and smiles, even as he frowns. “Hey, you stick any artwork on me like you would a fridge, and I'm gonna have words.”
“Heh. You wish,” she grins. “Okay, let's think this through. You are now an organism with actual semi-metallic components. That would be impressive enough, but with the amount of heavy metals it should take, it should literally be killing you. And you haven’t been exposed to those, have you?”
“Definitely not. I've been eating normal stuff, too. Take a look at the Awakening section. When this process kicks off, the body starts to generate mana–whatever it is. It can combine with other matter to form unique elements that function similarly, but can have radically different properties. It’s wild, Julia. This is a chemist’s dream. Substances that physics say can’t exist!”
He’s trying to put a positive spin on this, but she knows he’s also masking his internal anxiety, and possible sheer and utter terror at this prospect. “Okay, so, how does iron get to those levels?”
“Over time. Hemoglobin requires iron. If mana combines with it and it accumulates in the body, it starts forming the building blocks of the scales. Now, this doesn’t really explain the whole transformation thing, but I think this is completely beyond our understanding for now. There's some stuff we can infer.”
“Alright, eat enough red meat or certain plants that can absorb iron from the soil, you could build up enough, cross-react with this mana substance, and then your cells are programmed to repurpose it. It makes sense. Sort of.” This cup of coffee in her hands isn’t quite big enough for this dose of insanity they’re dealing with. “So, you and I are at effectively stage one of Awakening. Weird stuff like scales and feathers can show up, and some elemental abilities might turn on at random, and…draconic eyes?” She has to squint to read it in the text. "It also says eye color may change?"
“Yeah if that happens, you and I are going to be taking a sick day from school. To put it mildly,” he says uneasily before sipping from his mug. “Man, your mom buys really good coffee, remind me to thank her.”
"I will." She continues to pore over the text. "In layman's terms, the whole body is reorganizing, and the baseline human body gets enhanced. This is sheer, utter madness,” she says with a nervous laugh. “But, this accelerated heart rate, you’re already at that point, aren’t you?”
“Earlier today.” He nods quietly. “Which means that sometime in the next week or two, you and I are going to be having a bad time trying to keep this quiet when we transform. Fortunately, it looks like, after it happens, we can shift back. The silver lining, I guess. No pun intended.” It doesn’t really sound like one, though.
“If this part is true…then everything else in this book must be true, right?” she asks hesitantly. “Jelly monsters. Unicorns. Dwarves. Elves. Hundreds of magical species–and probably more, considering this is only volume one,” she adds for emphasis. “So this means that there must be others who know magic exists. A mage society, maybe? They also probably spend unfathomable sums of money and bodies to keep this secret. So lets not make waves for now.”
“Yeah, that part occurred to me early on. YouTube fame is not worth a death wish,” he adds with a sigh. “What a shame. I had this idea of granting a bunch of young kids their dream of being able to fly on a dragon.”
This breaks her focus and she bursts out laughing, and almost spills her coffee on her lap while she has a much-needed laughing fit. He steadies her hand while she’s trying not to snort. “Fates, Drenar, you seriously know how to keep a girl off balance, don’t you? That is as adorkable as it is admirable!”
He smiles faintly at this. “I'm glad you approve. Still, though, you'd think someone would have told us this could happen to us. This means that there was already a part of us that wasn't wholly human.” That last part is a bit of a sobering statement, and she glances down at her mug. She's trying to picture it, those black-painted nails turning into sharp talons, and the rest of her body following suit. A hopeful thought does crop up.
“Well, we might be only half human, but we have a hundred percent humanity,” she says with infectious enthusiasm. Drenar quickly nods to that idea. “Still though…you'd think someone would have told us. You know. Like our parents.”
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“There's a horrible thought. Mom and dad may have picked out a day for it, kind of like ‘the talk’, but then they went and got into a fatal auto accident. And then left Diane and your mom no warning.” The silence that lingers for several seconds after is uncomfortably empty. "They couldn't have been that short-sighted, could they?" he adds in a hopeful tone.
“There must be more of us. There has to be. There were thousands upon thousands of dragons orbiting those Stranded Lands, or the Aether. Alex witnessed it, or so you've told me. So what is he?” She asks quietly. Drenar slowly sighs–he’s at his limits of understanding this too, and he’d gotten pretty far without the book.
“No idea. But there's a distinct date. Somewhere around early 1303, is when Alex reported as his last day alive–or well, aware of his existence. He doesn't know how he got there, either.”
“You think he's real? And not a figment of your imagination?”
“No. He knew things that can't be explained by coincidence. He called out his own species, before I read this book.” He taps the page for emphasis, where they'd left off on the various sub-species of dragons. “Every ability matches what he described. Frost breath, telekinesis, living steel scales. It all adds up."
“But again, if he's real, why's he in your head?” she insists. This is a mystery she can’t wrap her head around. “Is he like some lost soul? Does this mean souls exist?”
“If the Aether, or the stranded lands are this world between worlds, maybe physical matter can't exist there. Maybe only souls can,” he proposes. "He could be a wayward dragon’s soul. I mean, it's a theory. The perception of reality I brought along, I think I recognized it. It was part of deep woods camping from scouts. I just didn't recognize it at first. One of those mountains floating in giant chunks, it's Wheeler Peak, not that far from one of our trips. So maybe memories can be made manifest there, too. But trying to force reality on something that can't hold stuff together, it eventually disintegrated."
She looks at him and raises an eyebrow. “You realize how nuts that sounds, right? We have no idea how it works. And why haven't I heard a dragon talking to me?”
“Not sure. This Awakening happens for people above a certain percentage of draconic DNA, according to the author. But my case…I dunno. All I know is that this Ascension event must be important, but the author doesn't go into any details about it. There has to be more. For all we know, there could already be dragons among us, considering they're shapeshifters.”
“You mean, like my mom?” she poses. She taps the mug anxiously. “She has berserker strength. She can drink like a fiend and doesn't even get buzzed. She has uncannily sharp eyesight and hearing. She always knew when we were getting into trouble,” she adds with a soft chuckle.
“You mean, when you were dragging me into said trouble?” he says with a raised eyebrow.
“No, I was dragging you into having a good time! Which happened to be troublesome for others.” She flashes a grin at him when he throws up his hands in defeat. “C’mon, you wouldn't have half as much fun if I wasn't pushing you!”
“Admittedly true. So does this mean the overwatch raven, aka, your mother, is a dragon in disguise, and has told both of us nada?”
“Yep. Which means there's probably a reason for it.” Damn it, you've always professed honesty and honor, and you couldn't tell me this?! She keeps her stewing internally, for now. “Still, that's a later problem. We've got a currently burning fuse with you looking more and more like a lizard. You said they spread?”
“Yep. It itches and stings when it's spreading. I've been saving photos onto my local SD card. It's spread about fifty percent from when it first started. At some point, if that holds, it'll start affecting muscles, nerves, and organs, slowly changing more of me until the climatic transformation. And I've got zero control of it. It's gonna be a problem.”
“It's a problem for someone, I just don't think it should be you,” she offers softly. He lets out a grunt of acknowledgment.
“Noted. So tell me about your charge beam.” She purses her lips for a moment before thinking it over.
“I reached for the microwave after I got off the phone with you. I snapped my fingers because the microwave was taking forever, and then there was this brilliant blue-white spark that arced from my hand to the microwave. Destroyed it.” The tang of metal in the air still hasn't left the room, either. Why could she practically taste it? Were her senses cross-wired now? “I could even feel a charge of energy in my hand before that, like static electricity. It also left a tingling feeling down my spine.”
“So it's energy of some kind. No flame marks, just direct current. It heated the material via induction, essentially, the electrical resistance of the material as you pass a current through it. That’s super cool!”
“Forgive me if I don't snap my fingers at you anytime soon. From what I read, Maridian silvers are resistant to that kind of energy." Experimenting on her friend in this way may not be appreciated for the sake of dragon science on this one.
“No hugging, no zapping. I might still risk it,” he grins. “A superpower to match your electric personality!”
Well, she stands corrected, dragon science has just been green lit! “How are you not in utter terror at this paradigm shift?"
“Same way I treat all the other dangerous or serious situations, with a beat of wit to overcome my paralyzing fears. It works for me,” he says and refuses to stop that sardonic smirk. Stop trying to be cheerful, you goober. You don't need to be brave to make me feel better. “But, what's the next step? We need an expert. I'd vote for this Amaranth guy, but he's a ghost, it's like he doesn't exist.”
She takes a second to process it. “Maybe mages like their privacy, and spilling out the greatest secrets of humanity is anathema to that. Honestly, I think it's a good place to start, he's gotta be out there somewhere, we might just need to get creative. Here's a better question, though. Can we tell Angie and James?” Drenar practically grimaces when she mentions James.
“Definitely not James. He’ll freak out to the max, and I don't want him attracting attention. Angie, maybe--ah, one second.” Drenar's phone started ringing, and it sounds like Evan on the line. “What do you mean you…are you kidding me? Are you alright? Okay…where?”
“What's up?” Julia asks before taking the last dregs of her coffee.
"Hey Julia, we've got to put the sleuthing on hold and make a field trip," he says calmly.
"What, you chickening out?" She taunts. "Betcha I can teach you a few things that miiight be of use next time you see Angela. Because, you know, she loves dragons.” He looks at her with a horrified expression.
“Too soon. We’ve got a problem that needs addressing now.”
"Why, exactly?" She inquires. This call must be bad news for sure for him to act like this.
"Because Evan is sitting stark naked on the edge of town." Her mischievous expression instantly collapses.
“Excuse me…what?”