Crossing Boundaries Pt. 09

But that he had been able to overpower her too was concerning. She was older than him, stronger than him, more experienced than him. So, what was different about Kael that he had been able to best her? She had a wealth of knowledge at her disposal, gleaned over many, many years, all the dragons during training, the rebel groups back in her homeland that she had faced down with magic. Even the skirmishes with the gryphons had forced her to bend, to adapt, to always be flexible to the needs of battle.

And then to be faced with someone unskilled that had never been in a real fight before... It was unthinkable that he could have won against her and yet that was exactly what he had done. That one that was so young, not knowing what they were doing in a battle, let alone a friendly spar, was worrying for her kind and anthros everywhere.

A single human should not have managed to gain a win, in short, against a veteran master battle mage. Not a battle mage at all and most certainly not one like her.

The dragoness sat at her dining table, a cup of tea before her, though the concoction of herbs within would not soothe her concerns, not so easily that time. Kael was young. So, what of an experienced human battle mage? What would their powers be like? They had seen some of them in the war, but perhaps anthros had been amiss to dismiss them instead of the crude weaponry used and, of course, the influence of the dog soldiers in the war itself. They'd dismissed too much of what humans had done as propaganda, something that had been put in place to bend them into submission more easily, but to see it in action right there before her...

Oshun shivered, but not in a good way. Kael had been holding back, she'd been able to feel it, a hesitation behind every attack while his defence was played more naturally, more strongly. She didn't think that that was because of his inexperience, for the power in him could have gone wrong if thrown about without thinking, making it more obvious again why he had been so worried, earlier, about what had happened between him and the three dragon students. He was not to know that they were well, if they were licking their wounds. For what they had attempted to start in the halls, they had deserved it and been put in their place for it too.

Still, she knew that what had been said, before, of human magic was true, at least in part. There had been an invisible force, a kind of magic that she had not been able to see, a transparent shield to protect him, moving with him. And when he had clasped her with it, it had been quite as if she had been wrapped in bands of steel that she could not see, closing in around her, crushingly tight. If he had tried harder or she had been weaker, how far could it have gone? Could she have been crushed entirely, not solely to that safe point of restriction?

There was no telling what would come between human and anthro lands, but storms were brewing behind lines and diplomacies that were not coming to anything. If humans had such powers, along with all that they had professed in the war, what they possessed simply from who they were could be more than troublesome when anthros invaded the humans.

Well, not all anthros: just the dragons. Their hunger for territory and the raw need for it was still in the early stages of planning, brewing and stirring, though Kael was safe enough where he was, for the time being. The natural place for the dragons to target, first, was, of course, the human homeland across the ocean from them, moving on into the other anthro lands. Then, of course, Kael and the other anthros would face difficulties, though dragons were fairer in their conquering than other species, including the humans, had proven to be. At least, that was Oshun's biased opinion on the matter, working with ulterior motives, taking what pleased her while, in her viewpoint, being fair at the same time. It had worked for her so far in life.

They could have tried to target the gryphons, but, oh...they had proven tricky in the early stages, so much of their territory made up of mountains, cliffs, ravines... It was so rocky and abysmal up there that there was little reason for the dragons to want to take it on anyway, an uninhabitable landscape to many that would not allow them to prosper. But there were too many dragon eggs being laid and dragonets born, clutches larger than ever, though it was not as if they could change the course of nature itself. Nature had said that the world was opening up for them and that was all she knew, as a dragon herself, to make it right for her clan.

Drawing a scroll towards her, she dipped a quill in a pot of ink, considering what to write.

She had to contact her superior, the High General and part of the dragon nation's ruling council.

There were many concerns to relay to him.

To be continued...