There was no law saying that moons had to be desolate, lifeless places devoid of atmosphere. Yet, when Elijah thought of a moon, that was precisely the image conjured by his mind. And it couldn’t have been more erroneous.
Vyrin – the name of the moon, which roughly translated to “Root of Prosperity” – looked and felt much like Earth. The ambient ethera and atmospheric vitality were much denser than anything he’d ever felt before, but he’d been prepared for that. After all, that was why Tura had forced him to drink that torturous potion.
But what he hadn’t expected was the verdant estate stretched out before him. It would have been at home in period drama. Or at least that would have been the case if the palace followed suit.
It did not.
Sure, it was huge and sprawling and impressive. It also exuded wealth in ways both tangible and ephemeral. But the style was unlike anything Elijah had ever seen. The most apt comparison was if someone had taken the majesty of Earth’s greatest castles, wrapped it in neo-gothic principles, added a dose of sleek, geometric ornamentation, with a pinch of otherworldly monumentalism.
Then, covered it all in gold and silver.
Two massive sculptures – at least the size of the Statue of Liberty – loomed on either side of the path leading away from the teleportation rings. They depicted the familiar form of Kirlissa, one hand raised toward the sky.
Whoever had carved them had been talented beyond measure, and they exuded a deep and rejuvenating sense of calm. They also made Elijah feel somehow…luckier than normal. As if any task with which he engaged would be successful.
The paved path was made from a material resembling ivory, decorated with golden swirls that danced in the illumination of a thousand balls of light floating a few dozen feet above the surface. Each tile would have been a masterpiece back on Earth, and when Elijah stepped upon one, he felt a jolt of energy and ethera entering his body.
Not for the first time, Elijah wished he wasn’t wearing his fancy, leviathan-skin shoes. Not just because he preferred to be barefoot, either. Rather, he wanted to feel the full breadth of those tiles against his skin. The benefits probably wouldn’t be any more demonstrable, but the sensation would certainly become more visceral.
The setting was so immersive that it took Elijah a few moments to recognize that they were not alone. A line of people – numbering in the hundreds – stretched toward the palace. A few were clearly draconic in nature, sporting scales much as Tura or Birk did. However, there were plenty of human-seeming people as well, though it only took a few glimpses of scales for Elijah to recognize them as dragons in humanoid form.
On closer inspection, some of them looked like they’d taken inspiration from elves. Others had the stature of dwarves or gnomes. Still others had taken after races Elijah had never encountered. But most could have passed for humans.
Like him.
One such person seemed to have been waiting on them at the base of one of those statues, because she lit up the second her eyes found them. She grinned broadly, then raced toward them, throwing herself at Tura.
“Auntie Tura!” the girl screamed, wrapping her arms around the old woman in a pseudo-tackle.
And Tura laughed, the emotion making her look decades younger. Elijah also didn’t miss that the old drake didn’t even flinch, much less stumble from the impact.
The hug lasted for a long few seconds before the girl broke away.
“Hey, Birk Birk,” she said, punching him in the arm.
“My name is Birk. Single word,” he grunted.
“Aww, but I like Birk Birk. It makes you seem more interesting,” she pointed out.
“Please don’t call me that,” he mumbled.
She frowned. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”
“Saraalinisa.”
She pulled away and put her hands on her hips, asking, “What?”
“Be nice to Birk,” Tura chided.
“I am being nice. Nicknames are a sign of camaraderie. Everyone knows that.”
Elijah just stared at the girl. She looked like she was maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, and the way she spoke seemed to agree with that assessment. She clearly favored Kirlissa, though. Her facial features seemed almost elven, but with just enough humanity there to soften the hard edges. Her hair looked like strands of gold, which matched the swirling scales decorating her neck and disappearing into her robe.
It matched the one Elijah had been meant to wear.
“Definitely looks like a dress,” he said to himself.
Saralinisa clearly heard him, because her impish face whipped in his direction. “Right? That’s what I said!” Then, her eyes widened in recognition. “It’s him!”
Before Elijah could react, she had her arms around him in an even tighter hug than she’d bestowed upon Tura. He felt his back creaking under the pressure.
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“Uhh…”
“Oh. Sorry,” she said, finally releasing him. She had the good grace to train her eyes on the ivory tiles as she went on, “I get carried away. You’re kind of my hero.”
“Really?” Elijah asked.
“You saved my life!”
“Right. But…I mean…yeah. I did, didn’t I?”
“Saralinisa. Behave,” interjected Tura.
“What’s the fun in that?” pouted the dragon girl. She definitely seemed different that what he remembered. Perhaps there was a story there. “And it’s Sara. Not Saralinisa. You know I hate my full name.”
“Be that as it may, I expect you to be on your best behavior.”
Sara rolled her eyes and let out a huff. “Fine.”
Then, she wove her arm under Elijah’s and dragged him forward. He glanced back at Tura, who only gave him the slightest of smiles. Then, she shooed him away.
“How long have you been here? Where were you for so long? Mom was worried sick about you,” Sara babbled, like an overactive teenager. “And are you excited about The Fang?”
“Um…a day or two? The abyss. And I don’t know what that is.”
“The abyss?!” she half-shouted, stopping in her tracks. She turned, put her hands on his shoulders, and showed her most serious expression as she commanded, “Tell me everything.”
“There will be time for that later,” said Tura, who’d followed along at her own pace. “Why don’t you show Elijah around?”
Sara turned her head to Tura and stuck her tongue out. But she obeyed the command, dragging Elijah down the path. A few of the other attendees noticed them, but no one’s gaze lingered very long.
“I like your costume, by the way,” Sara pointed out, practically skipping along. “Very Earth.”
“How would you know that?” he asked.
“I went there, remember?”
“You couldn’t have been there long,” Elijah pointed out. “You know, before you got captured by goblins and gnomes.”
“Shhh!”
“What?”
“Don’t say that out loud!”
“Why not?” Elijah asked, trying his best to keep up with her rapid-fire conversational pattern.
“It’s embarrassing is why,” she squeaked. “Just please. Don’t talk about it.”
“You were what? Like level twenty-five?”
“Something like that.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. It wasn’t your fault.”
She just shook her head. “Everyone would make fun of me if they knew.”
“Alright. Fine. I won’t talk about it,” Elijah agreed as they approached the entrance to the giant palace. “But if you ask me, you have nothing to be ashamed of. You fought back against long odds. And you lived through it. That’s all anyone needs to know or should care about.”
After that, she went silent. For whatever reason, Elijah felt a kinship to Sara that he hadn’t expected. That hadn’t been the case the last time they’d met, so he had to believe that it had something to do with his dragon core. According to draconic culture, they were siblings, and to Elijah, it felt like it.
What was even more disconcerting was her demeanor. She had to be at least a few decades old, and yet, she moved and acted like an adolescent who’d only just begun to discover who she was. And Elijah could only think that it was the result of the differences in aging. Perhaps natural born dragons matured much more slowly than humans.
Elijah pondered that topic as they climbed the broad steps leading into the palace. The doors were open and manned by intimidatingly muscular drakes whose size put Birk’s to shame. Both were armed with the double-bladed staves carried by Dolo back in the Broken Crown, and they pulsed with the aura of powerful deities.
But neither flinched as Sara led him inside.
Elijah wasn’t certain what he’d been expecting, but the interior fit the style he’d already observed outside. If anything, it was even more ornate, and the details only grew more luxurious as they passed through the lobby and entered an enormous ballroom full of dragons and drakes.
As he felt so many strong auras, Elijah nearly stumbled. Perhaps he would have, had Sara not had a good hold of his arm. He recovered quickly, though he knew that it would have been much worse had precautionary measures not been forced upon him.
Maybe he needed to thank Tura for that potion.
That thought flickered out of his mind as he saw Kirlissa sitting on a throne on the other side of the ballroom. Her eyes locked onto his, and she gave him a broad, welcoming smile.
The whole room stopped.
Then, they turned toward him. Elijah wanted nothing more than to shrink away, but he pushed his introversion aside and gave everyone a little wave. At that, Sara burst out into laughter, which broke the tension somewhat. Everyone looked away, and Kirlissa’s smile broadened.
A moment later, Tura’s voice came from behind them, saying, “I told you to behave.”
Sara cut in, “It was funny!”
“Go greet your mother,” Tura said.
“Fine.”
With that, Sara reluctantly left Elijah’s side, which gave him a chance to ask a very important question. “Uh…why is she like that?”
“She’s very young.”
“I mean, she’s not though. Objectively, she has to be at least –”
“It is a characteristic of the draconic life cycle,” she said, leading him deeper into the ballroom. “When they are born, they are no more sapient than a guardian. However, as they grow older and stronger, they become more self-aware. We refer to this period as the Culling. Most do not survive. But if they do, they will experience a transition. An awakening, during which the dragon core fully materializes. This is regarded as the true beginning of a dragon’s life. Saralinisa’s awakening was only fifteen years ago.”
“I…I see.”
So, by that logic, she really was a teenager. “This awakening, it changes their personality, doesn’t it?”
“We believe it reveals the personality. Very few guardians have a concept of the self. They are beasts, albeit very intelligent and powerful ones. But a true dragon is something very different,” she explained. “Sara remembers the Culling, but it is more like it happened to someone else. Like an extremely immersive story. She knows the events. She knows how she felt. But she is practically a different person now, and she is still trying to figure out what that means.”
“That makes sense.”
“Does it? To a drake, it is a foreign thing. We experience nothing like that. Some believe that’s why we can never be true dragons,” Tura went on. “Without the Culling, we cannot become our true selves. Some in the Empire of Scale believe that it makes us no better than beasts. Others think that drakes are pretenders. False dragons. Still others regard us as failures. Without a dragon core, we will never be as powerful as our heritage dictates.”
“Core isn’t everything.”
“No. But it is a powerful factor in anyone’s development,” Tura pointed out. “Arguing otherwise is a denial of reality. You must accept this. Internalize it. Your dragon core puts you at the top. Your actions determine whether or not you stay there.”
Elijah frowned.
He wasn’t so naïve as to subscribe to the idea that all people were equal. But the notion that dragons were inherently better than everyone else just didn’t sit right with him. Part of that was because he was uncomfortable slotting himself into that role. But mostly? It was because he’d met plenty of people who disproved that idea.
“A person’s core doesn’t determine where they end up,” he said, restating his first response to the idea. “Just because the starting point is better doesn’t mean people can’t catch up. Or even surpass expectations.”
“Keep that idea close to your heart. It will push you to great heights,” Tura said. Then, she added, “Now, let us leave that discussion behind and focus on the purpose of this banquet.”
“What’s that?”
“Networking.”
Elijah could only groan at that.
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