Dinner had barely passed in the royal palace of Alterac, and the king was already running up to his study.

Again.

Kyle had occasionally skimmed through his meals when he was fully engrossed in a topic, but it was not common occurrence. At least not until now. With the recent Durnholde development, he’d been barely touching his meals continuously for nearly a week already.

He’d been like this back then, of course. Back in Lordaeron, Kyle had locked himself in the barn from evening to night to realize the ideas in his head. From murloc lures to the disastrous ‘auto-feeders’, the boy would barely remember to eat unless he was dragged to the dinner table.

Yet such single-minded focus couldn’t be fully villainized. The auto-feeder was a rickety failure, but the mechanism was converted into a decent crop transporter. The murloc lure gave the farm years of peace from slimy, scaly trespassers (nevermind Kyle’s disturbing domestication of them).

But a parent always worries when their child, even a stepchild, is not acting as they should.

Dylan softly knocked on the ajar door to Kyle’s study to herald his arrival, then carefully pushed it open.

“Kyle?”

Kyle shot up from his reclined position in his oversized seat, and Dylan felt a spike of exasperation as he caught the fading glow in his son’s eyes.

“I know you’ve interests beyond being king, but isn’t it a bit much to be magicking like this?” he admonished lightly, already knowing how this line of conversation would go.

It’d be another lecture if he’d found his royal son buried in ledgers and report scrolls.

“You’re barely eating, this room’s not even lit…and what time are you planning to sleep?”

“Uh…” Kyle glanced around, only now noticing the darkness of his room no doubt. “Not too late?”

Dylan sighed as he felt a familiar migraine come on. “Kyle. I know…we know you’re king now,” he began, emphasizing ‘we’ to make it clear that he’s here partially on behalf of a worried Clara. “We know you’ve got responsibilities, and that you need time away from those responsibilities to enjoy yourself. To be a kid.”

“I’m not a ki-”

“You are to us,” Dylan cut off, fixing a paternally stern gaze on his son. “We appreciate that you’re at least trying to be polite by joining us for dinner, but your Ma’s worried for you, you know.”

Kyle’s shoulders slumped. “I…I’m sorry.”

Dylan softened his stance, entering the study room while ignoring the heebie-jeebies he should feel when the lights in the room came on with just a gesture from Kyle’s hands. He came to his son’s side, kneeling by the overstuffed chair to meet the boy at eye level.

“Kyle, look. We understand you need your time alone, to practice your magic or explore your ideas…or to simply be a kid again.” The farmer paused as he tried to find the right words. That had always been his trouble with Kyle, finding the right words. Too smart to appreciate being talked down to or lied to, too precocious to be raised and treated his age.

Dylan opened his mouth, realized he’d be making a mistake, then closed it and tried again. “But…but don’t…don’t lose yourself in it, alright?”

He searched his son’s eyes and found the silent acknowledgement in them, and offered a lopsided, weary smile. “I know you’ve little friends your age here, but don’t isolate yourself chasing every bit of private respite you can. Kallum’s thrilled to be training, but he’s still up to follow you for whatever mischief you might be up to.”

“It’s not mischief,” Kyle said, almost pouting, and Dylan believed it even as he chuckled. The boy did a lot of sneaking out back in Lordaeron, half the time with his brother in tow (however reluctantly Kyle took Kallum along), and always for reason more than just childish misadventures.

Kyle had been caught with Kallum tracking how the moon weevils were behaving at night, so that he could experiment with the various pesticides he concocted. The sprinkling of piss, cheese and vinegar left a pungent miasma over the affected crops for weeks, but it did stop the bugs infestation admittedly.

Then there was that night they went out hunting mice in the barn to serve in his murloc lure. Dylan had been torn between relief and exasperation to find that the blood staining the boys’ hands were not his own.

And those were the antics before he found he was curs- before he found his talent for magic.

If not for Kallum’s clumsiness, Dylan and Clara wouldn’t have found Kyle floating in the air in the barn, bathed in blue light that leaked from his eyes. And there was that incident of him trying to repair the wagon by levitating the whole thing, while Kallum was supposed to unpin the broken wheel (Dylan thankfully stepped in before his youngest son rolled away with the replacement wheel).

And then there was that one night where Kyle actually seemed to enthrall a murloc and communicate with it…

Sweet Light, how Dylan had wished the boys would’ve been caught pranking neighbors or fishing instead…

“Well, mischief or not, your brother’s not so taken up by the chance of knighthood that he won’t be eager to join you.”

“I know,” Kyle sighed softly. “It’s just…” Melancholy suddenly flashed through his silver-grey eyes.

Dylan fought back a frown, and gently placed a comforting hand on Kyle’s arm. “Just what, son?”

“Some things are dangerous to share, you know?”

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The father sighed as he nodded in understanding at his son. “Aye, I know. Your Ma knows too.” Clara had shared the secret about her and Kyle’s origins when Dylan had courted her and won her heart. He knew enough from the tales about the dangers a discarded royal bastard and those around him might face, especially if their estranged father or his family decided to go cleaning the family tree of unwanted shoots.

And keeping Kyle’s magic a secret from the rest of the community had been a thing too. Miraculously, it was only until he was leaving for Dalaran did everyone find out, just as everyone only found out about Clara’s past when Dalaran knights came announcing Kyle’s elevation to the whole village.

Kyle blinked for a second, then took on a sheepish expression. “Yeah… A secret’s best kept with fewer people knowing it.”

“Very true. But tending to it all the time gives it away a little, doesn’t it?”

Kyle was silent for a second before he reluctantly echoed his father’s reply. “Very true…”

Silence crept in for a moment as Dylan rose up to his feet, and Kyle took a dip in his thoughts. An absent gesture from the latter’s hands sent a chair flying up right behind the former, and Dylan took the offered seat without a second thought.

“So…I’ll try to schedule my evenings better,” Kyle finally mused aloud.

“It’d be a weight off your Ma’s mind,” Dylan approved with a nod.

“I can’t promise to share what I’m doing though.”

Dylan shook his head. “Your secret’s your secret. Your Ma and I know you’re smart enough to handle that; We’re just worried that you’re getting too wrapped up in it.”

Kyle took on a thoughtful frown for a second before nodding gratefully. “Thanks, Pa.”

“And thanks for listening to your parents, eh?” he returned with a smirk.

“It’d look bad if the king was a shitty brat.”

“That it would. Good thing you’re anything but one.” Dylan gave his son a comforting pat on the shoulder before turning to leave. “I’ll go tell the cooks the good news,” he teased, heartened by how the boy winced at realizing who else his need for privacy had affected.

“I’ll probably have to apologize to them, don’t I?”

Dylan shrugged. “I don’t know, you’re a king and all that. But it’d be polite.”

“Yeeeah…”

“G’night Kyle. Try not to stay up late.”

“I’ll try.”

Dylan was just about to leave the room’s threshold when his son called out again suddenly.

“Hey, Pa?” There was a mildly apprehensive, cautious tone in his voice for some reason.

Dylan stopped and turned about. “Yeah?”

“Our family’s good at keeping secrets, right? Apart from Kallum, anyway.”

The father gave a chuckle. “Seems so.”

There was a heavy, almost tense pause before Kyle spoke again. “Would… Could you keep another one?”

Dylan hid and pushed aside his surprise well as he answered the question. “I don’t see why not. There’s space after the two big ones have been gone.” He managed to add some lightheartedness in his response, somehow, and Kyle reacted with visible relief, rising up from his seat.

“Thanks. You know the little crystals I gave you and Ma? Do you have it with you?”

Dylan responded by fishing out a string necklace from under his shirt to reveal the little but significant gift from his son.

“Good.” Kyle walked over to him with a serious expression. “Please brace yourself, and don’t panic, alright?”

“Bra-”

And then Dylan was stumbling as he lurched within a wash of light. He caught himself in time, but then immediately realized once the brightness had faded that something was off.

His vision adjusted and took in his surroundings, and Dylan audibly gulped.

Something was more than just off.

“Kyle…where…?”

The displaced farmer turned and found himself backpedaling as he took in the sight of a massive golden pyramid taking up the entirety of his vision. It gleamed with a bluish tint from the ambient lighting, lighting that glowed from all around, Dylan realized.

He- They were…underground?

“Welcome to my…retreat.”

It took a while before Dylan found his feet and mind, and Kyle slowly guided him through what was an underground city of gold and crystals. Gracefully curved buildings of alien design filled the massive underground cavern, some rivaling the royal palace in size. There were even structures that floated in the air, forming sections of a lazily spinning ring.

Every golden surface was pristine, and the crystals glowed softly. The underground city gave off a pristine, serene and more importantly ominous air to it, though it was far from uninhabited.

Even as he gawked, the large eyeball probes that Kyle once showed off flew past from every direction. Some had glowing cubes in front of their lightning irises, others had blocks of…wood?...or stone, and others still held nothing in their gaze.

“This…you’ve been coming here every night?”

“Not really,” Kyle answered a bit too lightly. “I can monitor this whole place from the palace. But I guess I wanted to show you what I’m working on.”

“Why?”

“Because it might get some worries out of your mind?”

Dylan blinked at his son. He blamed the madness from the boy’s blood father. “Kyle… I gotta admit, right now the worries are doing anything but leaving my mind.”

Kyle chuckled with false sympathy and then gestured to the gleaming, glowing surroundings. “You’re safe here, Pa. Really.”

“What’s all this for?” Dylan couldn’t help asking as he continued to stare from one building to another. He couldn’t find any doors or windows, and the designs were so foreign to his sensibilities that he couldn’t even begin to guess each structure’s purpose.

Kyle shrugged. “Keeping Alterac safe.”

“Do I want to know how?”

A wry smirk appeared on the boy’s face as he shrugged again. “Probably not. But there’s no magic threatening to blow up mountains or despoil farmlands here, I promise you.”

Dylan knew he should trust his son, that he would very much like to believe the claim, but... “What’s that there then?”

There were groups of probe eyeballs, each hovering around one of their own. Small streaks of lightning lashed out from the collective in a twisted flagellation ceremony, and fins and golden plate fell off the lone probes onto a pile below it. Just beside each group lay hulking, four-legged, spider-like things lying in a heap. Just as gilded as everything else, they looked dead, corpselike, until Dylan saw the hollow core in one as the probes lifted it up with leashes of lightning.

Machines. The spider things were machines.

Kyle followed his gaze and his answer remained nonchalant. “Oh. That’s not magic. Just engineering.”

The answer was not reassuring at all.

Especially not as Dylan saw the probes carrying their mutilated kin towards the spider frames and forcing them into the holes. More lashes of lightning seemed to seal the unfortunates into the machines.

Dylan was about to comment about the cruelty he was witnessing, but then the blue lights sprang out from the four-legged spiders, and they each rose up with powerful certainty. Stick-like feelers hung under each construct, and a glowing cyclopean eye stared unblinkingly under a dome-like carapace.

A group of them swiveled towards Dylan and Kyle, and then they came stomping over with their claw-like legs. Some of the rising panic was abated when Dylan noticed his son’s glowing eyes. Kyle had probably summoned them, then.

Dylan fought the instincts to run as they came to a stop before him. They were each larger than three carriages put side by side, and the baleful, unblinking stares were utterly unnerving. As one, the spider constructs lowered their frontal legs, bowing before father and son.

“Pa, meet the dragoons. With any luck, you’d be the only other human who’ll ever have to see them.”

It was not the most welcoming introduction Dylan had ever had, and they looked nothing like dragons, but the farmer managed to simply nod after an apprehensive gulp.

Kyle proceeded to give a brief tour of the cavern city and its other inhabitants. The names were queer, but Dylan kept that opinion to himself. What was important was that this was not Kyle’s little leisure project as Dylan and Clara had thought it to be. A secret army was being built here, a monstrous one of gold and blue that Dylan felt would utterly crush anything in its path.

And it required a lot of considerations. Kyle spoke of resources and logistics and workarounds, venting all the pent up information he’d held onto himself all this time. It was clear that Kyle was going the extra mile beyond the extra mile to keep his newly acquired kingdom safe, and it was also very disturbing how much magic he was using to achieve it. But at the same time, Dylan couldn’t help but feel proud that his son that was not of his blood had trusted him so much as to share something as momentous as this with him.

“I can see why you’ve been eager to spend time here,” Dylan offered at the end of it. “But it doesn’t change my earlier advice; don’t lose yourself in here, Kyle.”

“I won’t,” the boy promised.

“Thanks, Kyle. Now…could we get back to the palace?”

“Need time to process all this?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, I won’t be drinking… Though I barely understand what’s going on in here to spill anything, I think.”

“Don’t tell Kallum?”

“Obviously.” Knowing the younger boy, it might cause him to pester Kyle about coming here. Repeatedly. Probably to ride at least half the things Dylan saw moving about here.