Chapter Four #2
We stroll across the almost feathery orange grass back toward the king’s residence.
Caolan kept the tour pretty concise, avoiding the areas that cater mostly to civilians.
The official announcement about the migration won’t be made until after we’ve left, so he didn’t want to freak too many people out by turning up with a sorcerer and a demon, even if some—most?
—of them wouldn’t recognize us due to the travel ban.
It’s somewhat surreal—as a sorcerer, I’ve always blended seamlessly with humans.
No human could look at me and tell I’m not one of them.
But here… here, I stand out like a sore thumb.
I glance back over my shoulder at the tree with leaves made up of softly glowing lights.
It’s hard to see the glow properly in the daytime, but it must be spectacular at night—like a tree of fairy lights.
Part of me really wants to see if we can transplant it or at least bring some cuttings to Earth, but it’s going to be hard enough hiding two new sentient species and the few domesticated animal species they’ve managed to keep alive thus far.
Plants, with their propensity to cross-pollinate, would be almost impossible.
Even if they’re thought to be a previously unknown or new species, there are bound to be enough DNA differences to attract attention.
Right now, attention is the last thing we need. So… the trees and other flora stay behind and die with the dimension.
We reach the building, and Garin is waiting for us.
“Everyone’s ready,” he announces. “Including Dustin, who’s vacillating between being excited and self-important and terrified.
I’m not sure what Brandt threatened him with, but he’s promised me six times already that he’s going to make his people proud. ”
“That’s a good beginning,” Caolan mutters. “I hope he remembers it.”
The courtyard they lead us to would have been lovely once upon a time, but with conditions being as they are, has been allowed to fade away.
The ornately bordered garden beds are being used for vegetables—I can tell because Caolan pointed out the main kitchen garden as we passed it, and the foliage was all the same.
I guess given the limited land area they have, it’s wasteful to have a decorative garden instead of a practical one, but I wish I’d been able to see it as it once was.
Even the fountain, which is still running, has been commandeered for practical purposes, with irrigation lines leading off it.
Two clusters of people are gathered near the far wall, and without being introduced, I can identify which is the tac team and which are the officials, even though they’re dressed similarly.
Trust me on this—when you spend enough time around enforcement and government, you learn how to tell.
I guess some things are universal… interdimensional?
Standing apart from both groups is Dustin.
He’s trying very hard to look unconcerned and cool but also practically trembling with excitement.
Just seeing how happy he is would be enough for me to give Caolan a big kiss for making it happen…
you know, if I was doing that kind of thing.
Which I’m not. Because Percy said I can’t.
Percy said I can’t. Percy said I can’t. Percy said I can’t.
My new mantra sucks.
Dustin spots us just then, takes a step toward us, stops, hesitates, then comes over. It’s sweet.
“Good afternoon,” he says formally. “Garin told me you helped to convince my grandfather that I would be good for this job. Thank you for that. I will do the best job I can.” His stilted little speech comes to an end.
I incline my head. “You’re welcome. I’m sure you’ll be excellent.” Gideon says nothing, so I add, “You’ll be spending some time with Gideon’s boyfriend, Sam. It might be a good idea not to mention all the details of our first meeting. Sam is mostly easygoing, but he would get mad about that.”
Dustin’s eyes widen, and he sneaks a sideways glance at Gideon, then nods fervently. “It never happened,” he vows. “It will never happen again.” He winces a little on that last bit, as though making such a promise pains him. I bite my lip to hold in a smile.
Caolan, who slipped away to talk to the more official-looking members of the party, comes back then with two of them in tow. “David, Gideon, meet Even and Rae. They’re leading the teams coming with us to Earth today.”
We exchange greetings. It’s difficult to tell for sure if they’re elves or dragons, because visually the differences between elves and dragons in biped form are very few—or, at least, that’s my assumption after having met four elves and two dragons.
But there’s a depth and richness to the color of dragon eyes that hasn’t been there in any of the elves I’ve met, and a very slight difference in the sense I have of them.
They’re very similar, much like how I perceive hellhounds and felid shifters.
The first impression is just shifter, and then the other differences make themselves known.
Although, honestly, usually the easiest way to tell whether a shifter is a hellhound or a felid is size.
Hellhounds are just bigger as a rule. There’s no such trick with elves and dragons—they seem quite closely related, and the main sense I get is “other.”
But there does seem to be a dragon ish vibe coming from the head of the tac team.
I don’t want to ask, for fear of being rude, so it will have to wait until I can take Caolan or Garin aside and find out discreetly.
I also want to remind them that until we can neutralize Tish and éibhear, we need to be absolutely certain that the dragons are fully aware of éibhear’s plan to kill the magic.
I’ve been assured it’s impossible that any dragon could be manipulated into inadvertently assisting or be a spy for the other side, but I’m a bit paranoid, what with the whole plan to kill the magic and take over the world.
Wait… has that not come up yet? Sorry. So, in a nutshell, nine thousand-ish years ago, the species wars broke out on Earth.
It started with some petty tribal leader getting pissed off because the lucifer wouldn’t let him wipe out a neighboring tribe, and somehow escalated into widescale attempted genocide, with the much more populous humans trying to kill the rest of us.
The elves and dragons, who until then had apparently been frequent visitors through the portals, retreated home, and King Raeulfr instituted a travel ban until things were safer on Earth.
Unfortunately, that never really happened.
While the magic finally noticed that it wasn’t just the usual pestilences etcetera killing us off in droves and stepped in to end the wars, it did so by making all of humanity forget the existence of other species and forcing us to live under the radar.
King Raeulfr decided that allowing travel to Earth under those circumstances was too risky, both for his people and ours, and the travel ban remained in place.
That wiped out an entire section of their tourism industry, and elves who were making their living from opening portals to Earth had to find something else to do.
éibhear was one of those. He began experimenting with opening portals in time and created a new travel industry—one he had complete control of, since he didn’t share his method.
It made him very rich, but apparently time wasn’t designed to have people jumping back and forth, and anomalies began.
When it was discovered that his time portals were causing the destruction of the dimension, the king asked him to stop.
He agreed—for a fee—but while the main part of the population was hoping their dimension would be able to heal, he secretly continued his now-illicit business for those wealthy and immoral enough to still want to hire him.
The result is the pending collapse of the entire dimension.
When the magic—or as the elves and dragons call it, the life force—made King Raeulfr aware of what was happening, éibhear was stripped of his ability to open portals and of the right to be reborn.
The next time he dies, it’s forever—his soul will never again reincarnate.
It’s a heavy punishment, but the destruction of millions of worlds and millions of lives is no small crime.
However, éibhear was still not remorseful.
Determined to survive the apocalypse, he and the small group of followers he’d amassed—mostly those who’d used his services with the full knowledge of what the outcome would be—reached across dimensions to make contact with Tish and the CCA.
The new plan: take over Earth. Tish, once the leader of an insignificant anti-human cult, was assured of elfin support in overthrowing Percy as lucifer and taking control of the community while éibhear forces humans to bend knee to him.
And how do they plan to prevent the magic from stepping in this time?
By killing it.
Lost to the mists of time, unknown to most and thought only to be a folktale to others, there is a method by which existential magic—the essence of life itself—can be made corporeal.
An elfin spell, read over the lucifer’s seal of office, willingly witnessed by representatives of every species, and sealed by dragon flame.
And once the force that binds all of existence is bound to a body, that body can be slain.
We don’t know what would happen then—we just don’t know. But one of the few things the magic itself has communicated to us is that it would be bad.
So the lucifer’s seal is under guard, as is the king’s spell. And I’ve been told that every living dragon is accounted for, all of them on our side. But I can’t help being wary. Any dragon who’s part of the advance party needs to be kept absolutely safe.