Angela sees that breakpoint on Drenar’s expression and feels it before he clenches his jaw, and points to Nick. That look of being beyond pissed off. And that twinge of mana in her heart shifts.

Sam, we are about to see some violence, and we have problems. She should be more worried about alien magical crystals in her body, hearing a crystalline chime getting louder and louder, just at the edge of her hearing, or that Luminari seems to have taken a liking to her and is adding its own input.

You might want to stop him, Sam cautions, but she gives a slight head wave–one that Joey picks up on, next to her.

“Get Celes in here, now,” Drenar growls, and Nick instantly jumps up and heads out of the door, and Angela rises to motion to him.

“Don’t do something stupid–”

“Angela? I think we are getting answers this time around. Kiera, mind if you come along? It’s probably better if both of us go,” Nick states as stiffly as any other statement from him. Kiera is already at attention, with several scorch marks and claw rendings on her armor–but still mostly in one piece from her brief skirmish with Valosterla. “Stay tight, Angie. We’ll be back.”

The doors closing behind the two of them are almost deafening, and Angela walks over to Drenar, seeing that twitch on his wrist again. “I know what you’re going to do, and this is not the answer. They have–”

“Crossed an ethical line. I have a theory. And if you want to help me on this one Angela, it’s persuading her that the truth is necessary for the survival of everyone in this room.” He stands there at attention, gazing at the door sternly, and doesn’t even look her way.

“So what are you going to do? Taze her, until she gives us the answer?”

“I might,” he answers with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “Angie, what has been going on with you lately? I might have lost track in the last couple of firefights.”

“Okay, let’s hold off on that one for a bit while you chew out my mom. Try not to go right to violence, okay?”

He rubbed a bruise on his face, and grunted. “This is me we’re talking about. I’m the poster child for patience. So are you, but if I were you, I’d be trying to rip your mom apart. They put that shard inside you. That’s my theory. And they got it from someone who has a background in knowing what those crystals are.”

“Wait, who?” she stumps for an answer, but it’s when Joey chimes in, red-furred ears straight at attention, that it instantly clicks.

“King knew what it was. He recognized the sample I took near Dave and Diane's home!” She pulls what’s left of the crystal sample, a few glittering fragments sealed in a canister. “But, hang on, I thought that deposit was new. What are you trying to fish for, Drenar?”

“Where it came from. These weird crystals are connected. Joey, where’s the sample Rick brought in?”

“I put it in the lab, why?”

“Bring it here. I have an idea.” She springs to motion and heads out the door, with Kyle going with her, asking her if she has another mad-hat idea. Which is starting to leave the room, a little bit empty

“Drenar, I am really questioning your judgment here. Playing science with magical rocks that seem to give me superpowers, is a bad idea,” Angela insisted. He lets out a sigh of contentment, and she scowls. “Are you cracked in the head, or are you just channeling maximum calm right now?”

“The latter. I’m getting my answer, one of two ways.” He taps his boot calmly against the floor. Meanwhile, James has walked up, and points to Rick, still consoling his family.

“How do we know that he didn’t give up the location on us at his house in Jersey?”

“When would he have had time? Val’s soldiers show up, then SAF? Something else is going down, James. Levine’s following up that thread. We need to establish a timeline. And I need to confirm a theory.” James points a finger at his armored breastplate, fury etched in his eyes.

“Yeah, sure, act calm when it’s my sister on the line! How are you–”

“James, stick to logic, it better suits you.” The fact that he has no patience for James is quite telling. “Rick floating through the aether is just one more puzzling element, and I got sucked into the minus zone, too, along with Joey. Val says she hears the crystal singing. SAF looking for Rick, too. I saw those soldiers, they were eyeballing him as we took off and looked infuriated.”

“Whoa. Why is Rick a high-value target? Unless of course…”

She trailed off. A horrible thought came up, and spun around. “Amaranth, question for you. You've been awfully quiet here lately. What is Gaia’s Cradle? Drenar mentioned it briefly.”

“Gaia’s cradle is a theory, it's a myth,” Levine scoffs, and is looking rough around the edges with a bit of 5 o’clock shadow–which is unusual for him. “Supposedly, it's the origin place of all Kin, crafted by Gaia herself.”

“It's real. I saw it,” Amaranth stated with gritted teeth. “I found ruins in southern Peru, on my last venture.”

“The hell were you doing in Peru?” Drenar demands and finds a new target for his ire. “I've been in two gunfights against numerically superior foes, who go out of their way to cause chaos and destruction. I have Rick, the favorite chew toy of Valosterla, in my custody. There is no way these events are not linked–

“Rick was there. I saw him briefly, running out of an intact temple so old, it predates the dragons,” Amaranth answered succinctly, and Drenar’s jaw dropped. “I saw him disappear into thin air when the crystal let out a brilliant surge of light. When I saw that, I called Joey about phasic creatures and other strange phenomena. She mentioned you and your unique teleport, hence I came running.” Rick peered over at him, eyes wide.

“Holy Gaia, was that you?! I was busy running away from something with too many mouths, and that gem yoinked me before I could get to you!”

Everyone starts paying attention again, and Angela wishes Joey had not high-tailed it–no pun intended–out of the room. Rick points at Amaranth. “Wait. What were you doing there, exactly? That place was a ruin, that funny crystal brought me there after the portal should have rendered me atomized, and dropped me in a monster nest. And there was this huge spire of crystal next to it.” Drenar looks like she's doing math–as is she–and the answer she comes up with is absurd.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

“Rick…have you had any other weird interactions with the crystals?” He’s painting in the corners of the mystery, she can feel it. These events must be related.

“No. Just that one time, but I heard them long before that, and then I tried to tune them out.” Rick looks at Angela and notes the crystalline traces on her arm. “It affected you differently, didn’t it? When did you first hear them?”

“Shortly after I Awakened. Everything with a substantial mana component affects me or gets enhanced. Drenar’s dagger, Luminari, the sword of the Valkyries, and those odd crystals that don’t seem to fade.” Rick nods softly

“You guys don’t have any easy job in the Luminaires, do you? Val’s fixing to kill every one of you, your name got mentioned a lot. More like screamed at.”

“Yeah, surprising isn’t it?” Angela asks smugly. “Weird shit happens all around us. I liked it when my biggest challenge was my finals from high school. How could you work for her?”

“The Talons picked up the tab for Abigail’s tests,” Rick sighed. “That’s why. Don’t judge me for trying to do the right thing for someone I care about.”

“I’m not. I’m just amazed you’re still vertical.” He lets out a deflating sigh.

“You got my family out. I owe you the world, so, whatever I can do to help, I will.”

“You and Volkir need to fill us in on the details of this mad escapade as soon as we’re done here, Rick,” Drenar instructs him. “I need to know what it is we’re dealing with.”

“They’re gonna save the world, Dad!” Abigail giggles. “Well, I mean, we have to, or Gaia will die, and then the monsters will come back, and–”

Angela knows there’s crazy, there’s trauma, and then there are kids who just do not know how to drop a truth bomb. Everyone turns to stare. “What? That’s what I heard!”

“I take it back, I’d rather be dealing with the rhyming, murderous dragon again. At least that was a problem I could wrap my head around,” Drenar sighed. “Where are Kiera and Nick?”

Joey bounds in in a flash of red fur, and hands Drenar the crystal. “Look, Drenar, playing secret messenger is a little bit of a bad idea, I think we should–”

“Trust me on this,” he says softly.

“I do, but I worry we might be miscalculating,” Joey says while biting her lip gently. Angela can hear the crystalline shard chiming quite loudly, and she forces herself to not reach out for it.

“What if this does the same thing the other one does?” she asks. He looks at her, looking concerned.

“What if it doesn’t?” he responds.

The door to the room clacks open loudly, and her mother is livid at being wrangled into the room. “The nerve of you two, Kiera, this is house arrest! You call yourself Valkyries?!” she screamed.

“Celes, shut up for a minute,” Drenar calls out coldly, and she turns her ire toward him. “I’m gonna ask you one question. You need to answer it truthfully.”

“You arrogant dragon, I have told you everything you need to know–”

“Ah, see, there’s the rub. Everything we ‘need’ to know,” he catches in an instant, as does she. She folds her arms and regards her mother.

“Okay Mom, we are done playing around. You tell me where the hell the shard in my chest cavity came from, or I take this crystal into my hand and see what happens. We’re gonna get nuts!” Angela declares with an evil smile. Her mother’s face goes livid.

“Don’t you dare try to threaten me, Angela,” she snarls.

“Uh, did we switch roles, Angie?” Julia laughs nervously. “That could be a bad idea. And it’s even worse that even I know it’s a bad idea.”

“Okay, pop quiz time, Celes,” Drenar states, and pulls the crystal gently out of the enclosure. It seems to arc and pop in his gauntleted hand, and he points to Celes. “What bargain did you make to save Angela’s life? She was dead for fifteen minutes. What are you not telling us?”

“Is this a normal day for you people?” Rick asks, looking aghast. “That’s also mine!”

“Thanks for the donations dedicated to dragon science, Rick! Truly a blessing in disguise! Drenar says with a beat of humor but turns stone cold again when he looks at her mother. “Who’d you make a deal with? I would say maybe the Conclave, or someone from the Followers of Gaia, the little I know of them. Val made a comment Angela even looked like her, which I found a little odd. Are you so deluded that you were willing to play science experiments with your daughter, not knowing what could happen?”

“Yeah, it’s kinda not cool to put magical artifacts inside dying kids,” Angela quipped. Her mother went stone-faced and set her lips tightly pressed. “No? Okay then, Drenar, let’s see what happens. Maybe it’ll be another isekai trip like our dear Rick here!”

“Sure, make light of it, why don’t you,” he groans, even as he cautiously takes a few steps back. She reaches for the crystal, and those chimes are now a chirping sound. Like a chorus of birds, almost. She can almost even hear a voice, hidden in the sounds. Something hauntingly beautiful, the way the sound wraps around her. “Last chance, mom.”

“Nothing will happen. You’re foolish, all of you,” she snarls. This is typical for her–just once, she wants to rub something in her mother’s face, even if this might be a monumentally bad idea.

“Oh, well then, I guess I’ll borrow this for a second–”

“DON’T!”

Her hand stops millimeters from the faceted crystal, little motes of light emanating from her hands, almost as if in anticipation of her touch. Her mother has her hands reaching out, as if to ward her way. And she is terrified. “Don’t do it. Please.”

“Start talking, mom. Right now,” she uttered venomously. “I was dying. What did you do? Dad’s been out of the loop on this one, so that can only mean this was only your decision. What was the plan?”

“I…I needed you to live. I would have done anything to make it happen.” she stands there, looking devastated. “I would have even done something desperate, if the right person came along, with a solution to save your life. You were always special, Angela. By some fluke of circumstances, James didn’t get the same…condition…that you did.”

She knows with a sinking feeling what’s coming. “Someone came to you with a solution. But they didn’t tell you all the details, did they?”

The tears do come. Angela has never seen her mother cry, not before this. It was almost as if she’d walled her emotions away, the ones that made her capable of being able to feel. She speaks in strained words, tinged with heartache. “He promised me that he could keep you safe. He held his promise. They barely got the surgery done in time, but you were…empty. Gone, already. He told me you might be different when you woke. He was mostly wrong. But you had something more, something greater within you. A fragment of something longing to be whole again.”

That weight in her chest isn’t just the tension. It’s the wail of her drakensoul echoing in her mind. Warning her, that the answer on this one might carry a cost too high to bear.

The room is dead silent, save for those chimes, now, and her mother sobs as she breaks down. “A fragment carried from the source. She was supposed to be the next aspect of Gaia. but then she disappeared. And I was left alone, with nothing left but the fragment she left behind when the Ascension Events occurred.”

More pieces of the puzzle clicked together. The dragon's disappearance. Gaia’s disappearance. Kiera had spoken of a crystalline tree, demarcating the site of her demise. A formation no one had been able to explain. “She’s always been here.” she puts a hand to her chest uneasily. “Through time and space.”

I’m sorry, Angie. This was not supposed to be your burden to carry. She feels the anguish in Sam’s voice, and she forces back that clenching feeling in her own throat.

“But why? There were other solutions–”

“Not to this one,” her mother sobbed. “I was told, that the person in the right place could make all the difference in the world.”

“And who was this man?” Drenar asks quietly. “Because if it’s who I think it is, we need to find him, and fast.”

“I can’t name his name. If they knew what he did, they would kill him, they would kill every person that has ever known that man.”

“I’m going to throw out a name, Celes. Don’t answer it. Because all trails seem to lead to him, with everything he knows about current events, I’m willing to bet the world that he’s part of the solution.” Her mother says nothing to Drenar’s comment, and he closes his eyes and shakes his head, cursing under his breath.

“A man called a Kingmaker.”

She feels that small pang of shock reverberate through her entire being when her mother dips her head, ever so gently, and she lets out a loud explicative.

“Lovely. Looks like round two with our nefarious advisor just made our ‘to do’ list,” Angela states unhappily.