The killing stroke doesn't come, even though Angela is already in motion to grab Drenar’s wrist, and she holds him firmly. He doesn't offer up any resistance.

“I didn't take you for a stone-cold killer, Drenar.” She looks right at him and can see he's still in control. The grip is all wrong, she realizes with a palpable moment of relief.

“I'm not. No need to overreact.” He's trying to keep his own anger from boiling over, and he brings the blade level for King to see. “That's not something I'd ever do, and certainly not something my mom would ever have stood for. Take a look, King.” He addresses their prisoner. “I think you know what this is. Don't you?”

“A dagger. A well-made one. And perhaps, a sentimental item for a young child,” King says, as if disinterested.

Angela hears a sharp chime and winces–like a crystalline chime just went off right in her ear. King seems to note it when his gaze shifts to her, a flicker of amusement in his face.

What does this creep know? About us? About Drenar? What’s his angle? She doesn't take more than an instant to ponder it.

“Yeah, that's what I thought. You've been eyeballing it the entire time we've been in the room. Like you know something we don't. So educate me. I'd like to know how this dagger and my mother's fate are tied together.” Drenar doesn’t point at the sharp end, but does present it in a way for King to observe it.

“Oh? Trying to get me to slip up? You know, if someone hadn't jumped the rails, you and I would have had an introduction under far better circumstances. I'd have brought you into the fold a lot sooner. Like our currently detained Jonaleth. That was…a challenge, to subdue his rage–”

“Don't test my patience, King. Jonaleth and I have one thing in common, we both watched our mothers die. That's it.” He still might come to blows, but Drenar has a remarkable patience limit that she doesn’t, and even less than Samarina’s snarled words in draconic. “You assume I’d ever work with the likes of you. If you’ve done your homework, you’d know that your crew stands against everything I hold dear in this world. You know far more than you let on. I think that my mother gave it to me to protect myself. Against threats that normal weapons wouldn’t work on.”

“Good assertion. Now ask, who made it?” King taps his fingers impatiently in his restraints. But, Angela notices something.

He keeps tapping that ring on his finger. She shies over to his side, just out of his field of view, and Drenar leans in.

“Gonna guess a wizard made it. It has runes. That means, someone put a lot of effort into it, and my mother likely knew what it was. Your statement already confirmed my initial suspicions on what she was, and if you know the car crash was a sham–a dreaded notion that I’ve been slowly coming to realize over the past week–then you know who she was.”

King smiles. And keeps tapping. But not so randomly. Is he…doing morse code with it? Some other means of silent communication? “Closer. I think your associate DeShandrea is more familiar with such an item. Aren’t you, Nick?”

“The hell you say?” Nick snarls, and his fingers flex into the grip of his autobow. “No King, I don’t know what it is. Though I have a few theories, now that you seem to be trying to give out a hint. Drenar, we need to cart him out of here, I don’t want to be down here in case backup shows up.”

“Oh? Got your reflexes in motion?” King says with a smile. “Well, I’m sure you can figure the rest out. After all, I’ve got places to be rather soon. I’m overdue for my next appointment.”

Tap-tap tap. Tap. Tap-tap.

“Is he serious?” Julia growls. “Nah King, you’re going to prison. For…well I dunno, what’s conspiracy to commit terraformation and regicide add up to? Or the vanilla cases of murder by proximity to Valosterla?”

“Oh he’s going to prison for the rest of his conceivable life,” Nick announces with a smile. “Shame, really. I thought me and Dillenger would have to chase you for our entire careers, with us being Sherlock to your Moriarty. Does seem a little anticlimactic.”

“You know we’ve still got the psychotic dragon warlord and the former head of the conclave to deal with,” Drenar reminds him. “They won’t be pushovers. I think the next round is going to be a hard-fought battle, knowing our luck.”

King chuckles, and Drenar tilts his head to the side, his expression perplexed. “Then again, I’m not underestimating you, either. You can tell me the sordid history inside a jail cell. We'll have plenty of time to talk about my mom’s mystery past.”

“Oh? Going to cut me loose? I didn't think you'd take that offer."

"No, your continued health status is now contingent on me hearing this mystery solved, Now. Start with the car accident, what appointment were they going to? That was something that always bothered me, they went in the wrong direction and away from town. What was so important about my mother that warranted her death?"

"Why, is a very important question, indeed.” Drenar furrows his brow.

“You think you're going to drop that bomb in my life, and play games? Was she working for you, King? Is that how you know?”

"No. She and I would have been on opposite ends of the spectrum. But we have the same goal."

"Wait. Did you just say--" Angela's thought is interrupted by her continued observation--and her body instantly floods with adrenaline.

Her danger sense went into overdrive.

Tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

Angela's eyes widen before she darts over and seizes King’s wrists, and tries to pry the ring off.

“He’s signaling backup!”

There’s a thunderous sound as a detonation at the door to the lab upstairs blows open the entryway. Metal debris bounces off the corner, down the stairs, and into the room. Angela kinetically shoves Drenar out of the way just before a deadly piece of twisted metal spirals between them, barely missing them and the others.

The projectile smashes into a server rack in a screech of metal and sparks. King’s restraining cuffs instantly snap when his ring glows bright green, and a radial wave of silver energy blows them off their feet. Julia braces against the desk, then hurdles over to close for a plasma grapple.

King anticipates the deadly female, dodges the shimmering energy lasso, and blocks her follow-up strike, landing a well-timed kick that doubles her over. He grabs the bag of hardware storage in one swift motion.

Angela groans and tries to get her feet even as Nick springs to his to engage, firing his bolt pistol point blank, but missing. King is no slouch, he keeps the firearm wide with a series of deft maneuvers, even stripping the magazine out of the weapon and flinging it to the wayside, and smacking Nick in the side of the head with the weapon. He staggers dazed by the hit.

Drenar swings wide with dagger in hand–but King is faster and grabs the autobow off the floor with a flick of his wrist and blocks deftly. Drenar’s dagger flares with blue light searing across the cutting edge. The blade shears through the weapon. King staggers back, dancing and dodging against Drenar’s strikes. King blocks with an effective guard and more deft motions, and even manages to grab a resin grenade of Drenar's belt after a sweeping blow leaves him reeling for a second.

He chucks the grenade at Julia before she can get up. The substance locks her in place, and she charges plasma across her body to try to melt the nasty substance, roaring in fury. King manages to hold even ground against Drenar, the two of them locked together in a contest for control of the dagger. But King is absolutely calm, even confident. Angela is trying to get on her feet, that blast had left her weakened, but otherwise not injured beyond a pain response.

“Well well, looks like the second rune unlocked already! You’re more attuned to these relics than you have any right to be at this point, looks like they found a couple of favorites among you!”

Drenar flings the dagger to the side after he manages a well-placed kick that disrupts King for a split second. He recovers, grabs Drenar and flings him across the table, banging into a console. Angela thrusts out her arm while closing to engage, shocked that the dagger almost magnetically comes to her hand. There's a tingle radiating up her arm.

That crystalline chime is back, and it’s louder than ever. She lunges faster than she has any right to and King barely dodges it, and his hand-to-hand is purely defensive, but certainly effective. He manages to keep it away from his body, and grins.

“Oh, looks like they’ve found themselves a new recruit, with the way this delightful little gem reacts to you–”

“Enough!” Angela snarls and kinetic blasts King against the wall with a full-force effort. His arcane barrier reacts and barely protects him. Shards of concrete chip and flake off the wall when he bounces back from the strike. He makes an effort to keep giving ground, back to the door.

“What’s your game, King?! What are we to you, pawns? Or knights?!”

“I love that you can make a joke in the middle of a fight. It speaks of ultimate control,” he says with a smirk. “Gentlemen, your timely assistance please, but try not to kill them. Just slow them down.” His boots clink and he blasts backward in an impossibly fast dodge from her strike, and four talon soldiers in black body armor aim autobows from the entryway. King gives them a wayward salute while his men open fire, a stray bolt pinging off her spell barrier and forcing her to dive behind a server rack, with the others doing the same. “Well, it’s been fun, truly entertaining!”

“Oh, this bravado bullshit is getting old! Shock and awe time!” Julia tightens her hands into fists and plasma courses across her body, shattering the resin in an instant. The scintillating energy stays wrapped around her. Angela flings a barrier over her as Julia lunges into the autobow fire, and there’s a thunderous boom and a surge of white-blue light.

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Julia becomes a living bolt of lightning that bowls into three of them. They go careening like bowling pins, and the single man who managed to dodge gets slammed into the wall hard enough to crack the tiling, and Julia surges after King.

He looks nonplussed at his men’s extreme ineffectiveness against dragons, like he’s forgotten how absurdly overpowered they are against vanilla shock troops. “You’re next you James Bond Villain wannabe, you’re gonna ride the lightning, and it’s not gonna be a fun time! Get back here and take your beatings!”

Angela grabs Drenar and darts up the stairs where King is already making a hasty exit. He throws a glass container to the ground, and a barrier bursts into reality, shimmering blue and white sparks. It surrounds him at a distance of two meters which shifts into a solid state of shimmering sparks that look like glass. Angela bounces off of it, as does Drenar, who smashes at the barrier furiously with all his might.

Julia reaches out and grabs both of them and Angela feels a surge of energy across her skin--painful, but manageable.

"Hit it with telekinetics, I'll keep the lackeys off your backs!" Julia bounds back to deal with mopping up the stunned Talons operatives while Angela smashes the barrier with a kinetic enhanced kick. It cracks, but the blow should have shattered a regular barrier.

“You’re not going anywhere King, not till I get answers!” Drenar screams, and in a moment of brilliance, tries slicing at the barrier with his broadsword. It pierces, but it’s like sawing through a piece of wood, and the blade gleams even brighter.

King wastes no time in placing down a series of tri-folded plates that he pulls from his satchel, and Drenar tries cutting through with all his might. “Damn you King, you’re not getting away!”

“Really? Seems like I am, actually,” he says with all the smugness of a man who has considered every action before the fight began. “Food for thought…ask yourself, who made that dagger? Then you should ask yourself, what do you know of your mother, Trisha Rashalda?”

“Bastard! You don’t get to say her name!” Drenar bashes the barrier with a telekinetic burst at full power that cracks the barrier, while Angela uses her own focused kinetic strikes with her fists to crack the barrier in small spiderwebs of damage. King looks unamused.

“Note to self, martial prowess is at an extreme peak, and I’m barely able to keep even. Crosomer wasn’t embellishing on that one it appears, or any of the rest of the assessment. Looks like you might be up to the task, after all.”

“Drenar, time your strike!” Angela barks out, and Drenar syncs up and they both strike the glass-like barrier at the same time with the dagger and his fists, but the barrier seemingly shoves the blade backward, nearly wrenching it from her grasp. The cracks multiply, and they both reel back. “Again!”

Crack. Crunch. Creak.

“Again!”

Crack!

The spider web of cracks in the magical barrier is multiplying exponentially with each hit, but King has already powered the one-time-use teleportal pad. “You can’t run from us, King, we’ll find you! Don’t you dare underestimate us!” she snarls in fury. He smiles politely, and even bows his head briefly before adjusting his tie.

“I won’t. By the way, don’t take too long looking for Asqualia. Last I heard, Val was likely backstabbing me and launching an assault force to go find some precious research journals–and knowing her, she’s going to make it a bloody spectacle. Just something to mull over for a spell. Farewell, hatchlings, we will meet again.”

There’s a blast of shattering magical glass that dissipates into the air when Angela bursts the barrier apart. She tries to knock King away from the device, but he’s already gone. The teleportal is smoking and sputtering, having run out of juice. She kicks the device to the wayside, and screams in fury.

They almost had him! And then they’d let their guard down for a split second!

“God damn it!” Her breath is ragged as her chest rises up and down, and she can feel the tingle of energy across her–mana burn, or her telekinetics getting slowly more developed? Julia is in a similar state, and looks like she’s ready to kill someone. The men on the floor are all groaning in pain, and two of them are nursing broken limbs or are scorched and bleeding from her brutal strikes.

But Drenar is beyond that–she turns and sees him leering at the now ineffective Talons soldiers. He grabs one off the floor and slams him against the wall in a choke hold, eyes alight with unbridled anger. “Where’d he go?” Liquid nitrogen couldn’t come close to how coldly he stated it, which is a dangerous tone from him.

“Don’t…know,” the soldier gasps, and tries to pry Drenar’s iron grasp away from his throat. “Slippery…eel…”

“If I have to ask again, it won’t end well for you. Where did he go?” Drenar gets up and close his face, and…for the first time, she’s slightly intimidated.

She’s seen Drenar devastated before, when his parent’s life was tragically cut short. He’d been a shadow of his former self, and hollowed out. Even almost six years later, he still isn’t back to who he was.

She’s never seen him furious. Never like this. Not once.

“Drenar, you’re going to seriously hurt him, if you hold him like that.”

“That’s the point.” His words are as icy as the grave when he utters those three words. “Where is the Talons’ base of operations?”

“Secure access–teleportal scrambler–fry you on entry,” the man chokes out, and he’s struggling to breathe.

“Drenar, stop.” Angela puts a hand on his shoulder and gives him the gentlest pull. He clenches his jaw tight, and stares right through the man before letting him go, and he slumps to the floor, wheezing and grabbing his throat.

“You said you weren’t ready to kill.”

He takes a minute, breathing heavily from the earlier exertion and the hardened lines on his face soften before he turns to her. “You think I would? For these guys?”

“I think you can. But this isn’t what you want.” He barely even glances over his shoulder at the injured soldiers.

“Maybe not for them. Against someone like Valosterla…” he doesn’t finish the thought and clenches and rubs his wristwatch uneasily. “Until there’s no other choice.” Drenar sheaths his sword while Nick keeps his weapon trained on the soldiers. “Julia, tie them up. Nick, where the hell is SAF? They should have been here by now.”

“Yes, I wonder why they’re delayed,” Nick says on a bitter note. “Angela, you alright?”

She’s been clenching her fingers into her fists so hard that her nails had cut into her skin, and are bleeding lightly. “Did you know?”

“Huh?”

There's only one single thought going through her head, a thought that’s beyond the pale when it sounds like more than theory, and she speaks in a truly menacing tone that even her mother dares not to use with her. “I'm gonna ask again, Nick. Did you know?”

“Did I know Drenar's parents were murdered?” He asks with his mouth agape for a second, as if he can't believe he's been asked. “No. Absolutely not! If I had, it would have been the first thing I would have told all of you in an instant! That is not something you hold back from your friends. I'm insulted that you think I would be capable of that kind of deception!”

“You sure as hell lied about being a fluffy verdant dragon Nick, which means you’re capable of lying about other things.” Angela is about to use some very unkind words, and she’s not going to stop.

Julia intervenes before she can get underway. “Whoa! Cool it you two! I get that everyone in the room is pissed, myself included, but this is what King does, he’s the spy! It’s his job, to steal secrets and cause chaos! He's probably blowing smoke about what could be!” Julia conveniently puts herself between Angela and Nick, and she's still shaking from either adrenaline or barely-contained fury.

Drenar's been wasting no time taking zip ties off of Nick's bag and hog-tying the deplorables, who are now as silent as the grave. “Drenar, you good?” Julia asks.

He ties the last one up, and turns to her, looking fatigued and utterly defeated. It's like the luster in his eyes dims a bit. “Nah, Julia. I just confirmed my worst fears that my mother didn’t die in an accident with my dad. Evan was right, and I didn’t want to believe it.

"Something bad did happen. Which means everyone is lying to us about it, and that is why I am so immeasurably far from good right now.”

There’s a clink of metal and another golem pops into the room from the now buckled double doors, and Angela can see Joey’s face, looking perplexed.

“What happened?” She's likely seeing four teens looking extremely pissed off in the middle of a debris field trailing from the bunker, and not having any idea what went wrong.

“King got away.” It’s about all Drenar can manage to say, and he rubs at his wristwatch–he does that a lot lately, Angela observes silently. And a thought of why has crept into her mind. “Joey, Val’s coming for Asqualia. You need to get out of there and warn the rest of your staff.”

“Okay, that’s a lot to unpack, and King must be a genius-level wizard if managed to give the slip on Nick–oh, sorry,” she apologizes as Nick lets out a frustrated sigh. “Did you just say that Asqualia could be under attack soon?”

“Friday at the earliest. They’re staging weapons and personnel,” Drenar answers distantly and is looking at Angela’s hand. “Angie, can I trade back?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” she says after handing him back the dagger, and he hands back the broadsword and sheath. It isn’t her imagination, there’s a soft tingle of a crystalline chime when she lets it go, back into his hands. “Joey, we need to debrief, and get everyone out of Asqualia. These creeps are a next-level danger, Drenar is right. I think this is the smartest thing we can do right now–”

“Like hell I’m abandoning my home to a bunch of jacked-up magical stormtroopers! If they even try to set foot here, I’ll make sure they die in writhing agony, and Nick knows exactly how competent I am at deterring or killing monsters! It wouldn’t be a large leap in skill applications for me.”

Her determined attitude brings a small amount of relief to Angela’s dour expression–she’s fierce, even with her intellectual personality.

Brave heart, Samarina chimes in concurrence. “Joey, these people are dangerous–”

“So am I!” she retorts before Angela can get a word out. “Look, the first thing I need, is for you guys to not go against another insanely dangerous criminal mastermind and get here to Asqualia! There’s stuff going on with you guys that ties into the research I started doing in the past few days And I could, I dunno, use the protection of four extra dragons! Also samples! But, maybe when the threat of imminent danger isn’t there,” she adds and looks a little embarrassed. “Nick, what about SAF, can you call them?”

“We can’t. SAF is compromised, and I am all but certain of it. There’s no way King could have gotten a way in without inside help, and I’ve got a few theories. Joey, I’m packing up the golem. We’re going back to my house as soon as men and women I trust secure the bunker lab. Everyone here, Levine and James included, do not know you guys were here. Are we clear?” Nick says sternly.

Joey looks at him, mouth in a silent gasp for a second before her expression hardens, and she nods after a second.

“This is going to be as dangerous as one of your hunts, isn’t it Nick?”

“Worse.”