Ten minutes earlier, before the fireworks start...

“Joey, you want to run this by me again? In layman’s terms?”

After the quick report to Zameren, Joey and Kyle had bee-lined to her apartment. Not that she minded his dwelling, but it constantly smells like grease, and sintered material. Her apartment is much less…intense with the scents, and has a few posters from her academy days still shamelessly framed and on the wall, and everything neatly put away. Her center room is an array of lab equipment, a TV, her laptop, and various other arcanist gear. She’s started taking a liking to his tinkering skills with magitech, and has tried her hand at a few things, including her automatic alchemical hopper.

But after they get in, it’s all business. They run the samples with the quiet hum of the analyzer sitting on a shelf, like a stainless steel-clad oven with dials and displays still churning out numbers and data. It’s a contrast to the simple furnishings she keeps in the main room, and the gentle hum of music turned down to background noise.

“Okay, I’ll run it by you one more time, from a different angle.” Kyle’s still trying to keep up with her logic process, and she peers at him when he taps an image on the TV. She wills herself to be patient and give the longhand explanation. She puts the image of the school yearbook on her screen and mirrors it to her smart TV display. “Let’s start this from the top. What’s a drakensoul?”

“Um…a dragon’s soul that got split asunder in the great Ascension. Also known as the greatest epic fail of magical history?” he suggests in an edged tone. She taps a claw impatiently on her keyboard for him to continue. “Okay fine, less sarcasm. They were lost for about seven hundred years, and randomly found their way back to the planet by getting absorbed in other human souls?” She lets out a sigh of disappointment.

“No. No, that is not how it works. At all. That is too simple! We have to get to the core question. Why is a drakensoul?" He looks at her blankly. She's so obsessed about this, that she forgot to transform back to human when he met up with her earlier, after their field trip to a magical biozone that shouldn’t exist. It had been overwhelmingly distracting, and she had scrambled to slam the door closed when he arrived at her dwelling. It could have been a costly mistake.

"The theory goes, around 1.6 to 2 million dragons tried to open some planar gate to another planet. In gross violation of every law we have to keep the Outsiders from coming back and making us into food, slaves, or worse. And that they spectacularly failed and vaporized themselves. That's the why of things. They Darwin awarded themselves off the planet." He recites it as if it were the snarkiest professor in history.

"That’s better. They used massive hordes of mana crystals to try to open a gate, but vaporized everything but their soul and magical energy. That’s the theory. The problem is, all their notes also got torched. So no one has a clue, or even how to replicate what they did," Joey says sourly. "We have no concrete proof that they achieved what they intended. For a near-miss on wiping out an entire sentient species, that's terrifying that we don't have better answers than that."

"I know. Dragons ghosted themselves in a plan that hilariously backfired. So then what?" She pulls up the next image. An old black-and-white image, taken from the late days of the First World War. This photo is famous in the mage world–the photographer had been trying to capture the horrors of the trench war.

He had instead witnessed something unprecedented and miraculous. In the still image, a silver dragon is surrounded by Imperial German Army soldiers, who look in awe at the mythical creature, the shreds of his soldier’s uniform still clinging to his body. His name was Wilhelm Gadwall. An eighteen-year-old boy, who had thought he was going to die that day. His prospects would have been grim: either shredded to pieces by withering machine gun fire, choking on poison gas, or vaporized by the errant strike of an artillery shell.

None of those had happened. That man is still alive today over a hundred years later, because of the bonding of a wayward dragon's soul and a human body–two souls, in one form. Today, he still spends his time in the mage world advocating for peace, and his efforts bleed into the normal world, funding projects for improved renewable energy sources. He became wise in his years, knowing that war is driven by hatred, money, or strapped resources. He chose to focus on the one that could be most easily fixed, and his discreet funding has driven the latest generation of solar panels, the efficiency creeping up beyond the traditional thresholds.

He was not the only drakensoul, as they were soon called. More emerged in the intervening years, but the spectacle and novelty eventually died off after some decades. Now, it was as run of the mill as a half-dragon’s Awakening.

To her, it’s still a vastly undocumented process that hints at the secrets of the dragons. Something that could change the course of world history at a fundamental level.

“Joey, how long are you going to stare at that photo?” Kyle asks. She’s been so focused on reciting the history texts in her head from memory, that she almost forgot she’s in the middle of her explanation.

"Sorry. Anyway, they found a way back. We think they made a connection to the aether, this transition–this interstitial–between planes of existence. But, maybe they didn't have enough juice to complete the connection bridge between here, and where they were going. So they ended up stuck.

"Dragons are composed of massive amounts of magical energy, it's integral to their entire biology. They have dedicated circulatory routes and special organs as part of that. So, their soul and magical essence endured, even though they dusted themselves. Now, the first drakensouls showed up during the trench warfare in France, about September 1917. What a system shock that was, I tell you."

She waits for Kyle to catch up, and he tilts his head in understanding. "There's still no sound theories on how they started merging with human souls. The best theory is that genetics-wise, we're related to dragons. There is a commonality in our genetics that indicates either some massive genealogical modifications, or rapid evolutionary off-shoots. So, these souls latch onto us, but not purely at random. Those who may have had a dragon in the family tree tend to get them more with the data I have, but not enough to Awaken by genetics alone. It's weird, it's wacky, and of course, it's not consistent, just like everything else with mana flowing through them!" She can't help but notice that he's enthusiastic about this now.

"So, two different triggers, but similar effects?" Kyle proposes.

"Precisely, but with some caveats. The result is Awakening, where the body restructures and the DNA is transformed to a draconic baseline. It's not quite like normal Awakening, where it's puberty part two. It's not like it just happens once their body starts building up mana. It's usually much more sudden."

"Hang on a second. How did these loose souls get back?" Kyle asks. “What’s the connection?”

"I took your theory about the storms, and looked at every record I could find back in 1917. There was a mana storm around a week earlier reported in a magical biozone nearby. After that, a lot of teens started getting symptoms of Awakening. But of course, they didn't know what was going on, so this was a huge crisis at the time. So they did some studies and found that the souls were fused, in some remarkably stable format.

"After that, just a trickle at a time, two, three, here and there. All across the world, with almost seemingly random intervals and physical locations. So this big crisis just became muted and labeled an oddity of magic, like it wasn't worth the bother to study," Joey says with a slight huff.

"Your tail is all puffed up. You're pretty worked up about this." She narrows her eyes at him.

"It's like this all the time, Kyle," she replies icily before gesturing to the screen again. "So lo and behold, there's a few thousand documented cases of this phenomenon over a hundred years. Kind of a drop in the bucket, I'll give you that. They're a little different than half-dragons in that they usually go right into their adult form, and not a juvenile dragon. Also, these kids end up with a dragon stuck in their heads. The soul and consciousness and memories of the dragon endure, and the people they merge into? They hear them, and can mentally connect with them. No one has bothered to study it with the extreme precision needed to understand such a thing. Or why this happens."

“Wouldn't you, as a psionic, have some ability to hear them?” he asks. She's drawing a blank, and it's fascinating that no one has even mentioned this in any report, which is why it's almost exciting.

“I have no idea.” His face brightens at this.

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“Holy crap. If you have no idea, then we might truly be onto something. But, the storms! It’s a common link! Well, maybe. We’d need more correlative data, we have just two points in space so far. That’s not even close to standing up to peer review scrutiny. We’d actually need to test this theory!”

“How would we test this theory, exactly?” she asks. She doesn’t like where the question could go.

"Um…we do have some candidates, judging by that high school yearbook photo," he adds drolly while gesturing to the image. “You’re sure they’re Awakened? I mean this could be just bad camera imagery.”

“First off, grossly unethical by what’s implied,” she responds testily. “Second off, look at their eyes!" She points out the kids in the rows. "This is a well-documented phenomenon associated with Awakening for half-dragons, something Amaranth knows by heart and almost every other professor we had! Seventy-five percent of half-dragons and drakensouls report a change of eye color!

“Now you’re right, it could be coincidence. So I did compare it to the previous yearbook photo. World of difference. No one who knows these kids would notice the subtle shift, unless they stepped away for a while, or looked at an older photo album. For some, it could easily be dismissed as some kind of photo chromatic aberration, or exposure issue on the camera." She shows the comparison for emphasis, and he relents.

"That was a long-winded way of saying, they're all dragons. How many?"

"Thirty-two. I miscounted on my first pass. But in a class of a hundred and fifty, it's mighty weird to find that many in one place at once. It's statistically impossible, even with known mage families in the area." She softens her gaze at him, and he's slowly coming around to the idea, which he usually does when he knows she's right. She's always done the research, he's figuring by now. No mind-reading is required when he sighs and realizes the truth.

"Okay, so, we got a bunch of Awakening kids. The question is, why?" He finally asks the question that she hasn't finished solving. “Could the storms be causing this? Just triggering mana generation earlier? Maybe something else about the storms that we don’t know about?”

"That's the fascinating part. I have no idea!" This is truly unknown, and while a little startling, it could be something of a massive discovery! "It could be the storms, it’s a strong candidate to look for more information on. But, there could also be other factors. Chemical exposure, mana energy, some kind of weird magical effect or spell that I can't even fathom that could produce this drastic effect on a bunch of teens. Maybe if they all had a higher percentage of draconic DNA, that'd be something to study too. We need more information," she says decisively. "We should interview them. Start with known mage families, and go from there. That would be an excellent data source, maybe give us new leads!”

"And the kids who aren't mages, you also plan on talking to them?" Kyle asks incredulously. She nods enthusiastically. "Isn't that just asking for trouble, since some of them aren't in on the greatest secret of humanity, the Veil? You know. This massive secret world we hide behind, which contains all sorts of magical critters–yourself included? And that they roam around the planet in the millions.

"Not only that, but there's also a hidden biosphere of some really crazy things, all curated by a secret mage society. Does this track as being even remotely a good idea? Even if it's in the name of arcanistry?" he asks with a rising tone and word count per second. She tenses her claws on her notepad.

"Yeah. Exactly. We must press for answers!"

"Let me stop you there, Kitsune Mitsune. Allow me to elaborate on how much of a bad idea that is. These kids probably have no idea what's going on! None! Approaching them like they're a pending lab experiment, is probably going to further reinforce the notion that they should have great cause to be terrified. Please be human about this," Kyle reasons.

"I am human. Ish," she adds before brushing a stray hair that fell in front of her eyes. “Well, I mean, I’m also a magical fox girl.”

“Kitsune,” he corrects.

“Shut up! Let me roll with it,” she says a teasing rebuke.

“Don’t sell yourself short! You’ve done that for years, and I’m not gonna let you do that here in Asqualia, especially with the prestige this place carries. You earned this place, Joey. You’re also more human than a lot of other humans I know, and that’s saying a lot,” he adds in an upbeat moment. “Your mom was telling me this story when I was over there at your guy's place last Christmas. She said you wanted to be the greatest arcanist ever. She still remembers errantly telling you that no Kitsune had ever attained so high a standing, and that you stomped your paws at this notion. You said you were going to be the first to be recognized internationally as a true master of the arcane with patience, planning, and passion!”

“I didn’t stomp my paws. She embellished that,” Joey growls playfully.

“Nah, I think you did. It’s very in line with your personality,” he says with a confident smile. “You don’t back down from a challenge, you never have. Speaking of challenges, how are we tackling this one, since we’ve taken our eye off the ball?”

“Being human,” she answers deadpan.

Kyle lets out a heartfelt chuckle after a brief pause. "Alright, Joey, you know what I meant earlier. Having humanity. Which is not, contrary to popular belief, exclusive to humans." She lets out a wry smile at that notion.

"You can sweet talk me all you want Bertance, but we aren't dating again."

"Yeah, you need someone who won't wither under a barrage of arcanist lingo like I do. And, doesn't have allergies to fur." She playfully punches his arm.

"It's hypoallergenic!" she retorts with a sharpened smile. Her fur color is pretty rare, even among Kitsune. Sadly, most mages wouldn't appreciate it, given the multi-millennia subtle racism and bigotry against Kitsune. Kyle did appreciate it, though. "You know this, don't be a butt munch, Bertance."

"Well if I'm off the menu, then at least find someone outside of Asqualia to make friends with! C'mon, not all mages suck at life and are zealots or bigots! Or maybe find another Kitsune! I know this pop-up club opening up next month, Wargen and Kitsune are preferred, but anyone can tag along. Sierra was telling me about it. We should totally go! I'll be the wingman. Wait. Does that work for a guy helping a girl find a date?" He asks while stroking his short beard.

Joey glances at him and is slightly impressed by his concern, and she flexes her elongated toes into the carpet. It's sort of therapeutic, and she shifts on her elongated ankles. The digitigrade stance always takes a bit of an adjustment if she spends too long in her human form, but at least it’s a quick transition.

"Kyle, I do appreciate the notion. I really do. And I would settle for someone down to earth, once I got about fifty different projects done, finished my PhD in Arcanist zoology, and worked on something truly incredible like solving a mystery as big as the drakensouls! Or even better, why magical biozones are being reinvigorated! Either one of those–or both of them, if they’re even tangentially related–could be the find of a lifetime!”

"Careful, Joey. Many a heroine has uttered such words, and consequently been thrown into a messy, chaotic adventure in like, two-thirds of my books," he grins. "We aren't suitable material for messy adventures involving heroes, fighting giant monsters, and saving the world. We're scientists! Okay, technically, an Arcanist is a scientist with several extra steps, but still."

"Way to derail a serious topic, Kyle," she sighs with just a hint of amusement. "Let's get back to finding a means to interview these kids. We must have some way to reach them without looking all skeevy! I still think we need more thought on that. We still have to dig through that field data from earlier today. Anyways, back to interviews...college recruiters, psychology case study volunteers…let's see…"

"Or, we could just talk to them now," he said while staring at his phone that he'd pulled out a few seconds ago. The way he says it catches her attention. "You know how we were just talking about that ancient group, the Onyx Talons? Remember how I said they put up that enchanted mural at the high school, like they get their kicks out of their creepy propaganda?”

“We know. They’re bad news if they blew up a mine. Plus the graffiti. What about it?”

“Well, so, Snags uh…asked me a favor. He asked me if I could put some of my little automated observer golems in the school to keep an eye out for his little brother Fritz, totally stealthy, no one would ever know. I went to the school and blended in for a spell. I put a couple of my observation golems in little nooks and crannies to see if those creeps showed up again.”

"Kyle, short version, and slower please,” she sighs.

"Um…you know those kids you were on about, that group of four?" He asks nervously while staring at the phone. "I'm not a hundred percent sure, but what did Nick look like again?"

"Eh, five-ten, out-of-date beach boy blonde hair, hazel eyes, a nearly perennial calm demeanor and a lean body like coiled steel, and a bomber jacket he wears all the time. Why?" Something has Kyle startled.

"Well, he's with a group of three kids that look mighty similar to the ones you were talking about, and they've broken into the school. And are currently searching the main office for something.”

For the first time in a while, Joey’s muzzle opens wide and she covers it out of instinct. “You wanna run that by me again?!”