The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2
Chapter 64

Part 12

When the three siblings went home for lunch, Karzog was left to guard the sleeping prisoners and listen for violence. He was the logical choice for this duty, since one of the attributes that he possessed that his three companions didn't was the inherent and legendary patience of his race, and he wouldn't hunger for another week so he didn't need lunch. His patience was still limited compared to that of adult dragons, but it more than sufficed in this case.

"So, are you having fun?" Mark chuckled as his children sat down to eat.

"It's okay, but the real fun begins tonight, when we wake 'em all up and inform them of their new circumstances." Helemia laughed.

"I take it you've been following our progress, since you didn't ask how it was going." Reggie stated around a mouthful of bread and soup. "Any comments?"

"You should've worked on the girl with the slashed guts before you Healed the rest of that batch, not last." Talia stated. "But it's a minor point, since she wasn't close to death. Other than that, excellent work." "You'll soon be out of room for prisoners in the backyard valley." Alilia pointed out. "Where will you move your operations then?"

"Here." Valentia replied, speaking psionicly since her mouth was too full of salad to talk politely, as she cast an Illusory map of Hiliani over the table, with an island on the north-west edge of the archipelago just to the west of the Sylvan area lit in blue. "It's defensible, it has a good water supply, and the best ocean fishing in Hiliani is just offshore there, which we'll need for the food supply. We'll move them over tonight."

"We'll have to work harder to catch 'em now." Helemia stated. "They know that they've been disappearing and they've mostly stopped fighting, but we're pretty well focused in on their psionics now, so we'll still be able to find 'em."

"Did you notice we got two adults too?" Reggie asked. "Presumably they were just fighting and wouldn't have tried to kill each other due to their god's ban on it, but that wasn't really obvious when we grabbed 'em. As soon as we realized it, we put 'em back and let 'em wake up, but they sure know something strange happened, so they didn't keep fighting. It increases the chance that the rest of the adults will figure out what's going on sooner than we thought they would, but if so, we'll just have to deal with it, I guess."

"We'll be pretty busy with this for a while, but we'll still come back for lunch every day, and to sleep, and for time off." Helemia added. "But we'll be sleeping in shifts to keep an eye on things."

"Oh by the way," Mark said as he sliced meat for a sandwich, "I was thinking about what you said, about not swearing the Sylvan to justice, but still needing to be able to trust them to stay on Hiliani and not interfere with us here. So if you fetch the Truthstone I gave you, I'll take the Compulsion and the automatic casting of Osbald's Oath off of it. Then if you reach an agreement with the Sylvan and you want to be able to trust that they'll stick to what they promised, you can have them swear to it on the stone. They'll probably want you to swear to keep your parts of it too, which would be redundant under your vows of justice, but it won't hurt anything."

"That's good thinking, Father." Reggie nodded as he Summoned the stone and handed it over.

"Povon, Talia and I made you up some rings while we were watching your exploits this morning." Alilia said as she Summoned a small wooden box to the tabletop beside Valentia. "They're based on the bracelet Povon wears, and they were her suggestion. Kragorram actually made them, but we cast all the spells. And of course the one that's big enough to be your headband is for Karzog."

"Of course!" Valentia giggled as she slipped hers on and passed the box to Valentia. "They don't look very impressive, but I can sure feel it tingling on my finger from all the power in it." She added, eyeing the plain steel ring with its single diamond cut into a simple octahedron, like two four-sided pyramids joined base to base.

"They're general-purpose focusing amplifiers, permanent and protected information storage of immense capacity, and excellent power batteries. And they're charged already." Talia explained. "The steel is the most durable alloy Kragorram's come up with, they're self-sizing and practically indestructible, and the diamond's shape is a single complete natural crystal. We've found that cutting diamonds to look nice and sparkly not only reduces their storage capacity by reducing their size, it also drastically reduces their utility as spelled items by interrupting their crystal properties.

"And believe me, once you get used to having a handy information storage item, you'll never go without one again. Povon got us started on that in our first training with Quewanak. She stored all her notes in hers; notes on thousands of personnel on both sides of the conflict, notes on locations and their tactical and strategic properties, everything. And it was all still there for us when we came out of the training. It's way easier than always casting Readings on yourself to refresh your memory.

"I use my engagement and wedding rings, myself, though after we tested yours this morning, I think I'll get one of those too."

"Thanks Mother!" the children chorused together, then giggled as they admired their rings with their magic senses.

"And thanks Povon and Kragorram!" Valentia laughed.

"You're welcome." came their psionic reply.

"Excuse me." Karzog said as he Summoned his ring, and it disappeared from the box. "I couldn't wait to try it on! Mmm, it's nice too! Thank you!"

"You're welcome." Alilia chuckled, amused at his exuberance.

"Well, we're off." Reggie declared as he pushed away from the table. And after a minute of hugs, kisses, good-byes, and love-yous, they went back to their task.

It was far more difficult to find the young Sylvan now, but with a careful combination of tracking, magic, and psionics, they were found, and steadily, despite the Stealth their god had endowed them with. By suppertime they had over eight hundred unconscious captives laid out in the little valley behind Mark's house.

The three siblings settled on the grass at the center of the valley to eat from their provisions and watch, while Karzog struck a proud pose beside them and woke their prisoners.

The Sylvan had been laid out with their feet pointing at the center of the valley and their heads up the slope. Now they woke and sat up, but that was all they could do. They could neither stand nor move their arms. Arranged as they were, the valley became a natural amphitheater, and the captive audience had no choice but to face their captors.

A few began yelling, but Karzog over-rode them, his powerful voice augmented to an immense volume, speaking Blezogeth.

"You have been detained by The Governors of Hiliani." the young dragon announced. "I am Vice-Governor Karzog, and I will be your keeper and your overseer during our time together. "Your continuous slaughter of one another ends now. You've lived in a state of ignorance, and we will now enlighten you."

He cast an immense Revealing in the air above himself. It showed a light-blue dragon on a dark, flat mountaintop, gazing up at the stars beside a huge, strange tangle of metals and precious stones. The size of a Sylvan who attended him revealed that the dragon was very small for an adult, not much bigger than Karzog.

"This is Zarkog, before he became Lord of Serminak, before he increased his size and changed his color." Karzog announced. "The thing beside him is a device called the Psionic Distant Listener. He used it to find intelligent beings on other worlds in the distant void. What he's about to discover in this Revealing, which is based on Readings taken from him much later, changed everything on our world. These are the crucial facts that he kept from everyone else until some seven years ago, by your reckoning.

"He had discovered other worlds that bore life, and this prompted him to look for psionic emanations closer to Kellaran. He found two sources of such emanations, one of which he never identified exactly. What you're watching is the night he identified the second psionic emanation that he found."

In the Revealing, Zarkog suddenly cringed, then cringed again, drawing in upon himself until he was almost huddled on the flat stone of the mountaintop.☐☐☐☐☐☐☐

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