by Cebelius
Shy nodded, and Terry glanced between the two as he said, "Woah woah woah. Are you fucking kidding me? I can't exercise anymore, but I'm still getting bigger?"
"You've gained four ounces of skeletal musculature in the last few days, Master. I can only guess how much you've gained since arriving on Celestine, but given the time between your insemination of Cecaelia and now I would estimate it at somewhere between four and eight pounds. Your tendons and ligaments are doubtless more resilient, and your bones will become denser and harder to break the longer they are under the influence of your mana."
"Well, there's such a thing as too much. I don't want to wind up looking like some comic book freak. That's just ridiculous."
Shy gave him a curious look, but Prada fizzed with laughter as she said, "Relax, Master. Once you start using the mana for other things its impact on your physique will slow to manageable levels. You aren't going to wind up looking like the Hulk. Once you learn how to manipulate the mana within you, it will be possible to direct it toward desired outcomes, rather than allowing it to simply run rampant."
Terry nodded, then said, "It's already slowed a bit, hasn't it? You're taking it out of me."
"Also true. My meals are sapping your mana. I would recommend you find a balance between what you feed me and what you keep for yourself. Give me too much, and you will be left unable to protect yourself in those situations I am unable to help you directly."
"Speaking of you, are you big enough to spar with me? I need someone to practice with and no one around here has the training."
"I ... can." Prada sounded hesitant. "It will be easier in a few days, or you can give me all of what you have today and I will be large enough to spar comfortably with you tomorrow. Your choice. I look forward to that, actually. It will give me time and opportunity to practice holding a humanoid shape."
"Take it. A one-time infusion in exchange for an agreement to spar with me on my terms at any point in the future."
"A bit open-ended, but I accept. You should have some of Laina's produce handy though. I take your blood when I take your power. If I take as much of your power as I can without killing you, you'll pass out."
Shy nodded at his look and stepped into one of the other rooms, coming back a moment later with a bottle, which she set in front of him.
He chugged it, then put his hand on Prada. It sank into her mass. He felt a tingling, but nothing like the absolute agony of having her spikes shot through his limb. When the tingling faded, he withdrew his hand and considered how he felt.
"You took all of it?" he asked.
Prada didn't answer. In fact, she seemed to be losing her gumdrop shape and was sagging across the breadth of the table.
He watched her until she started to droop over the edges, then shifted his chair back and got to his feet to avoid her as her substance stretched. He still felt vaguely sore. There was no discernible difference between before and after the mana was gone.
Well, at least I didn't pass out. I guess knowing how much power I've got left is a function of having a mana pool. I'll have to rely on Prada to tell me when or if I use too much.
"How do you plan to learn blood magic, Tee?" Shy asked, also getting up and coming around to him, while keeping a wary eye on the ruby mess drooping off the edges of the table. "No one I know is a theurge, and magi are traditionally loathe to part with their secrets without suitable remuneration."
"Oh, that one's easy, at least in theory," he said, looking away from his apparently drunk familiar.
"Prada has an extraordinary memory. I'm going to tap that, but I'm also going to get Ross to give me access to Volai's library, and I'm going to devour all that shit."
She blinked at him, then said, "You're going to read it."
He chuckled.
"Yes, Shy. I'm going to read it. All of it. Unlike my brother, I was never known for my brain ... but that doesn't mean I haven't got one. It's time I put it to use."
26
Headaches
Asturial stood in front of the door with a pair of very nervous-looking guards gazing fixedly at anything but her. She paid them no mind, but she'd stood at the door for several minutes now, and hadn't yet knocked.
She had no idea what she wanted to say.
The situation was almost unique in her experience. She did not hesitate. She took what she wanted. She spoke her mind. Now ... her mind spun in circles, and she couldn't think of anything to say. She just knew that she should say something.
Something is wrong with me. I need to go back to my lair.
Scowling, she lifted her hand, then let it fall to her side again.
If I leave, he will probably take his women and flee. If whatever is wrong with me fails to resolve itself in good time, I may lose him.
As whatever afflicted her grew worse, she'd finally come to the conclusion that at the least, she had to see him, speak to him. If at all possible she wanted to get him to agree to coitus with her so that she could see to her own needs. The prospective fight, while it would doubtless be amusing, was nothing compared to her health.
Her irritation got the better of her and she rapped sharply on the door, still having no real idea what she would say.
A few moments later, it opened to reveal the minotress. Astur couldn't remember ever having been given her name.
She looked down at Astur, her eyes widened slightly, and she asked, "Yes?"
"I want to speak with Terrence Mack."
The minotress tilted her head back and looked into the room for a moment, then stood aside and held the door open.
Astur stepped forward and took the room in at a glance. It had been three days since they had made their bargain. In that time she had seen neither hide nor hair of the template anywhere in the keep, and that was not for want of searching. His scent was unique and easily traceable, but as far as she could tell he'd not left these quarters in all that time. She had to admit, as she thought about it, that his scent had become attractive to her in a way she couldn't readily describe, and more than once she'd walked the hall outside these rooms just to catch wind of him. Now she filled her nose with his scent and it took the edge off her headache.
The room was awash with books. They were piled in every corner and several were stacked on the only table in the room. Terry sat at that table, and was looking at her with raised eyebrows. In front of him sat a sizable tome, though the template seemed to be most of the way through its contents, given the page it was open to.
"I was not aware templates could read," Astur said, blurting out the first thing that came to mind.
"I wasn't aware dragons had tits," he said, his expression twisting into one of mild annoyance. "Now that we've gotten your customary rudeness out of the way, what do you want, Astur?"
The dragon glanced around and saw a second person in the room, leaning against one of the walls. It was the strange creature she'd glimpsed in the bailey. It was obviously female, but though Astur had seen her in the bailey, she hadn't paid the creature any mind. She had black snakes for hair, brazen claws and black wings folded over her shoulders like a cloak. Her face was a mystery, hidden behind a blank wooden dryad mask.
This must be the bodyguard I sensed behind him earlier. She is tiny!
Having noted and dismissed the creature, Astur turned her attention back to Terry and said, "I ... want to consummate my victory. Now. I have urgent business that calls me away. I no longer wish to wait for the agreed-upon date to engage in this pointless fight, the outcome of which is already a foregone conclusion."
"Tough shit. You made a deal. If you want anything at all from me, you'll stick to it, and win."
Terry turned his attention back to the book without another word, seeming to dismiss her from his mind.
Astur took several long steps to cross the room, only to find that the strange-looking female had interposed herself between her and her object.
"Get out of my way, tiny woman," Astur said, filling her voice with threat. "You are of no con
sequence to me."
"Master? Can I kill her now?" the woman asked in a curiously sing-song tone that seemed to make light of Astur's threat. Her eyeless mask remained fixated on Astur. The dragon noted that her heart continued its steady beat.
She really is some sort of fool. She has no idea what she faces.
"She hasn't broken the agreement yet. If she upsets Prada, you go right ahead."
Astur blinked, then turned to look at the minotress, who held up both hands and said, "I'm Laina. Prada is over there."
Turning back, the dragon noticed the trailing edge of the sanguine devil — still disguised as a sash — waving at her.
"This is unacceptable, Terrence Mack," Astur said, trying hard to keep her voice reasonable. "Surely you cannot believe that my concerns are of no consequence."
The template turned away from the book and considered her carefully for a long minute. Then he said, "Astur, it may surprise you to learn that, in fact, your concerns are of no consequence to me. Let me break this down for you: I have an entire world after my hide. The Twilight Zone wants me, the Powers want me, and every female with delusions of grandeur and/or an overblown sense of self-importance wants me. You fit in one of those categories. Can you guess which one?"
Astur stared down at the man for a long moment, and he gazed back at her. There was no aggression in his expression — at least none that she could see — just a weary sort of resignation that defused her own anger for reasons she couldn't explain. He gave her a thoughtful look, then said, "I am sure that you feel your reasons for wanting my bond are important to you. I'm also fairly certain that you'll hold up your end of the bargain we struck. You've done what I asked in repaying the debt you incurred getting to me, and while I give you due credit for that, the fact remains that you didn't give two shits about that man. You just killed him. He was, and unless I'm very wrong, IS of no consequence to you."
He paused as though to measure the impact of his words, then went on. "As odd as this is going to sound, the fact that you didn't care about that man to begin with is why I don't care about you now. So here are your choices: if you beat me in the pit four days from now, I'll give you what you want and you can go do whatever it is dragon's do with the rest of their time. If you lose, I'll make use of you to get where I and my team need to go. If you leave ... then I will not be here when you get back. If you try and force me, then this body of yours will die, the deal will be off, and I will be out of the city before you can bring your main body to bear."
'Hehehehee ... oh, your choices are much narrower than that, dragon. I will enjoy the use of your body. Thank you soooo much for giving me the time I needed to make it mine! I have a side trip I'm bound to make first, but I'll be seeing you ... soon!'
Asturial's vision went white with pain. Less than a second later her senses failed entirely, and she dropped in a boneless heap to the floor.
When she came to, she was in a bed being tended to by a centaur with a bald pate and a spindly upper frame. Age lined his features, and he squinted at her as she opened her eyes and sat up.
"Can you feel your body?" he asked in a reedy voice.
Astur closed her eyes and sought the link from her proxy to her body, but that link was gone.
I am trapped here.
She shook her head and said, "It is gone. What happened?"
"I am not familiar with the nature of a dragon's connection to her proxy, but it seems that whatever the cause, its effect has been to isolate your mind here. Where was your body when this happened?"
"In the mountains." Astur waved a hand absently. "I must go."
She paused, glanced around, then asked, "Where is Terrence Mack?"
The centaur crossed the room and returned with a corked bottle as he said, "The template and one of his companions brought you to me and left you in my care. I am Phineas. I run the emergency facilities here inside Florence Keep. They also left this, which the minotress said you should take when you wake up."
Astur stared at the bottle in Phineas' hand, then at him and asked, "What is it?"
The centaur's bushy eyebrows rose and he shrugged, though there was a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "My lady dragon, I couldn't say for certain. If I were to guess, however, I would say it is probably minotress milk, and of such a quality that I will happily take it should you choose not to."
"Why would he leave such a thing for me?" Astur asked, shifting her legs off the cot on which she lay and resting them on the floor as she looked up curiously at the centaur. "We are not allies."
"Some folk simply care for their fellows, my lady dragon. I suggest you accept their gift, particularly if you are feeling any lingering after-effects."
She thought about all the various possibilities and dismissed almost out of hand the idea that Terrence Mack had anything to do with what had happened to her. Despite his proximity at the time, it simply didn't match what she knew of the man. He was either innocent of any involvement, or his duplicity was the stuff of legend.
"How long have I been here?" she asked, standing and taking the bottle from the centaur.
He said, "Several hours. There was some concern that you were dead initially, but over the last hour in particular your breathing and heartbeat markedly improved. I suspect the shock of having your link to your body broken put you in a state of torpor. That is only a guess. I have a great deal of skill with healing magic, but you required none. Your body is as you created it, and the picture of health as far as I can determine."
Astur pulled the cork on the bottle, sniffed it to confirm its contents, then downed it.
I've never had better. The template's effect on the minotress is truly remarkable ... and the instant he learns I've lost my body, our deal is broken.
"Phineas, was it?"
"Yes?"
Astur looked the centaur in the eye and said, "My future rides on your discretion. So much so that I am inclined to kill you to keep my secret, but I feel doing so would work against me. So instead, I will only say this. Should anyone ask you what happened to me, you are permitted to say that using a proxy for as long as I have has fatigued me, and that is why I briefly lost my hold on it. Should you say anything of my inability to return to my body, I will destroy you, and everyone that knows you. Do you understand?"
Phineas drew himself up to his full height and said, "There's no need to threaten me, lady dragon. I will keep your secrets because it is appropriate for me to do so."
She searched his eyes, his face, and listened to his heartbeat. If he was lying, then at the least it was something he was comfortable with. She found herself wishing she'd spent more time in a proxy form, so that she could more accurately take the measure of thosearound her.
"Very well," she said. "Thank you for watching over me. I must go ... thank the template for his gift."
Phineas watched Asturial's proxy leave the ward where he saw most of his patients, then tilted his head and looked toward a curtained off area in the back.
An elf, not more than four and a half feet tall and slight of build, stepped from behind the curtains. He had a swirl of black hair hanging over the right half of his face and the rest of it was coiffed so precisely and so strangely that it made Phineas' head hurt to think how much time it must take the little creature to get the job done each morning. His clothes were nondescript grays and browns. His ears stood out from his head like a pair of fins, and he turned large, speculative amber eyes on the centaur.
They looked at each other for a long moment, then Phineas said, "I am bound by my oaths. That does not mean Commander Ross should not know. The safety of the city may be at stake, Galfreas. I am certain you understand."
"She may blame you," the elf said, his eyes narrowing slightly as he spoke. "I would not place you in danger, doctor. You or your family."
"They are already in danger. There is a dragon out there, right now. In the best case it is dead. We do not deal in best cases. You know as well as I do there are ways and means for anything
the soul desires to attain. We have served this city together for a long time. We must do our part to ensure that those who replace us can do likewise. Go now."
The elf dipped his head and vanished. He did not turn and go, he simply disappeared. Galfreas had ways of moving around the keep that were his alone to know. As a master of illusion and the chief spy of Florence, it was his duty to see danger coming. He had failed to anticipate the template, or his trickery, and had been caught up — along with most of the court — in the disaster that was Volai Hart's last audience.
When Ross had reawakened him, he had taken in the story of what had happened and pledged his service immediately to the lion man. Now was his chance to make good on that pledge. The doctor and the spy were friends and confidants, and Phineas knew that even had he told the little man not to pass on what he knew, Ross would have known before the hour was out what potential danger now lay in wait for Florence. That Phineas chose to let him know they were in accord was more for the elf's peace of mind than anything. Galfreas needed to be free from distractions.
Phineas glanced around at the empty ward and sighed.
He murmured, "I can think of no better outcome to this debacle than one less dragon in the world. Tiamat, take no offense, but if we face either the death of a dragon or the corruption of one, I would have her death. Were I but capable, I would deal it myself."
