The Divine Gambit Ch. 11

"Stoooooooooop."

Beth spoke next, "So, what on earth was that, Sam?"

"I don't know. It was like I was drunk on J-juice."

Beth giggled and went to torment Sam's unfortunate wording, but the redhead shouted over her.

"NOT like that; His magical energy. His mana. I can still feel it in me. I've still got way, way more than I had earlier, but not so much that I'm intoxicated and acting like a freshman with her first drink. I've got a nice little buzz of J's energy coursing through me, but before it's like I was completely gorged on it, stuffed to bursting, uninhibited because of his attention. Right when we finished, I felt good, but then after a few minutes, it completely overwhelmed me."

With every sentence, Beth continued sniggering at how Sam's words could be misinterpreted.

"So you got filled with J's magical sauce, huh?"

"Ohmigod, I'm moving out. Beth, please, what else would explain it? I've touched his mana before, and he got me to cum with it, even while holding me in his arms, and I didn't have this kind of reaction. It's not like touching his dick was enough to cause it, or I would've woken up magic drunk from snuggling the entire night. What else would've caused it?"

Beth asked a question I should have posed earlier, "Could it be from getting magically pregnant?"

Sam didn't respond instantly, but when she did, her voice finally sounded wholly sober, the shock of our shortsighted lack of preparation jarring her out of her elation. "I don't believe so. I have an IUD, but they're probably not dragon certified, so I have no idea how that works. Even if that happened, I've never heard of this kind of reaction, even between a witch and a mythic, but it's also possible that dragons do something different."

Beth faux whispered, a conspiratorial edge to her voice, "Imagine explaining to your mom that you got pregnant the first time you did anything with a boy and that now there's a seventh dragon in the world, her grandbaby."

"Oh God, I'm changing my name and moving to Guatemala."

Eager to spare Sam any further embarrassment, especially considering it wasn't deserved in the slightest, I asked a question I had stored in the back of my mind.

"Sam, you said I didn't accept your Facebook request. I haven't used social media in years, and besides, wouldn't part of my transition to this world mean not using any of my old accounts anyway? Why did you need to send me a request anyway -- I'm sure we're still friends unless you removed me."

Sam lifted the pillow off her face to look at me in confusion, "Not Facebook, Fae Book. It's a magic networking service, one part Facebook, one part eBay, one part LinkedIn or Indeed, one part Instagram. Aisling created an account for you the first day -- there are pictures of you in the gym and when we went out to breakfast and of us all dolled up together in the courthouse when Aisling announced you. They're linked to a real account with your name and some generic blurb and everything. Didn't she give you instructions for activating your account and magically signing in? It's a whole thing for important figures like you to be accessible to commoners like me."

Beth had returned to laying against Sam's side now that the witch had calmed down, and she whispered, "You're anything but common."

I smiled at the sultry comment pulled right from my mind, but my eyes were drawn to the manilla folder and laptop on the desk. Over the course of the tumultuous week, I had entirely forgotten to investigate why my name was written there.

"I'm willing to bet she did leave me information, and I've just been a bit too busy to read it."

Beth asked, "Wait, you never set that up? I've been looking through all of the pictures of us that we've been tagged in. Everyone loved the dresses we all wore to court. Got a bunch of messages asking how to get in contact with you, too. People must've seen us out to eat and asked if you would be comfortable making appearances at their restaurants and which dishes you would prefer."

I cringed internally at the prospect of being used as a promotional advertisement for arbitrary restaurants. Complimentary dinner would be nice -- the ass-kissing and performative social dance would be exhausting. I really hoped I could nip that in the bud before it became a trend.

I slid out the desk chair, sat down, and looked over the manilla folder. Inside was indeed a whole pamphlet of instructions, welcoming me to the realm, giving me a list of instructions for activating my profile on the Fae Book, and a number of contacts to reach out to once I had done that. A little USB dongle was inside the folder.

The USB adapter and the threaded cord were familiar, but the dongle was a device I had never seen before. It resembled an old-style hard candy if they came in matte black on the end of a phone cable, a thumbprint-sized circle with depressions on both the top and the bottom. My instinct was to pinch it between my thumb and forefinger as an authentication method.

I turned on the laptop and allowed it to get to the desktop while I read the instructions. My instincts proved to be somewhat correct, except that it also needed a taste of my mana in addition to my fingerprint. I was meant to push mana into my fingers like I had during Sam's massage while pinching the device. Maybe Antonin wouldn't berate me for being so irresponsible with my abilities and my friends' lives -- as long as I led him to believe I had done this first.

While I read, Beth slid over to the end of the bed to watch the monitor over my shoulder. Sam stated her intention to go to the bathroom, but when she stood up, her legs wobbled and then gave out, and she ended up crumpling right back onto the edge of the bed. With Beth's assistance, her second attempt was much more successful, and the two girls went to the bathroom together. I felt a tinge of envy from Beth as they left the room. She didn't begrudge Sam a pleasant first experience; she wished she could have had the opportunity as well. It made my heart ache for her.

After misleading instructions had guided me to the wrong page initially (apparently, I was recovering an existing account, not activating a new account -- even though I had never used this service before, it had been set up for me in advance), I plugged the dongle in to verify my identity. I pinched it as the instructions described and gently allowed a raindrop of energy to pool in my fingertips. The device beeped and flashed green, and the website loaded a new interface.

A form appeared, with a significant amount already filled in with incredibly vague information. James 'Anderson' the 'Business Analyst Consultant' scrolled past me. The birthday was correct, but the year was several off. My interests were filled in but nondescript. There was a profile picture of me in the suit I wore to Aisling's meeting, but I didn't recall anyone taking our photo. The height listed was how tall I was a week ago.

I didn't really care about making the information precisely correct, so I simply hit accept, and a new page loaded. It asked me to confirm, deny, or delay a bunch of requests and asked if I wanted to see the ones flagged as high-priority first or view them chronologically. I went with chronological order under the assumption that there wouldn't actually be very many. My little time spent on a software developer internship had taught me that if the sender could flag something as important, some would simply because the option was there while others would literally never use the option. In essence, the flag wouldn't be remarkably accurate in many cases.

The first request in my stack was a relationship: friend request from Sam. I hesitated for a moment over the decline, wondering if that was the title she wanted to use now. In the end, I clicked accept with the intention of asking her and updating it later. The subsequent requests were equally as predictable: friend from Cynthia and Beth and employer from Evgenia. I wanted to put a pin in that, as well, to discuss later. I laughed out loud when Antonin marked me down as 'Research Associate' because of how it was both technically correct and absolutely absurd. Surprisingly, there was a message that didn't request a response from Marjorie, thanking me for trusting her with our clothing for the public appearance and encouraging me to return if I ever needed anything else.

Then I hit next and was reading a message from someone I had never met. Not only did I not recognize their name or the profile image that appeared when I hovered over it, but they stated as such in the message. I wondered how they had gotten my account inbox when I hadn't even activated it, but they then said they found my name in the minutes of the open court session and that they had a proposal for me and wanted to meet to discuss it.

The second thing I noticed was that the ticker on the bottom of the page said 7/2,039.

What a mess.

I wrote up a very generic "Thank you, but not at this time" response, explaining how I wasn't looking to get involved with anything new right now. I described that I was still overwhelmed by traveling and wanted to get to know the area before committing to anything, but that they could reach out to me again in a couple months. Then I rapid-fire copy-and-pasted it to every request where I didn't immediately recognize the sender, only momentarily glancing over the contents to ensure it was probably something I wasn't interested in.

It gave me a really twisted view of the community I had been thrust into. The majority of the first 1500 or so messages were straightforward business requests or generalized spam messages. Someone, somewhere, must've collected enough information to put the pieces together because suddenly, the solicitors seemed to be aware that I was a dragon. The requests got incredibly specific, personal, and made me feel gross. I really should have consulted Evgenia before I sent these messages, this was her area of expertise after all, but I felt comfortable simply declining for the time being. I wasn't going to be starting any negotiations until I spoke to Antonin, and maybe Aisling herself, about how people knew who I was and what I was. Unfortunately, knowing that they were now specifically written for me personally, I felt more inclined to read them. That was a mistake.

Some of the highlights included:

A witch sent a request for me to refill her crystals. Attached to the message was a twenty-picture photoshoot of her completely nude body in various poses, her nipples and genitals obscured in each photo by one of the crystals in question. The final picture was a full frontal nude where she had spread her legs and inserted a crystal partially inside herself, with the text "just 4 u <3" at the top obscuring her face.

An orc chieftain, referring to himself as Agnatosh the Defiler, sent a request for two liters of dragon's saliva, offering to exchange goods, services, or property to match my valuation. He then said he had a personal museum of sorts, a trophy collection of intriguing things related to powerful beings. He wanted to know what it would cost to acquire the first detached spike off my tail for his collection, alongside a signature for verification purposes. He opened his bid at fifty kilograms of gold... and his firstborn daughter. Not in marriage, but as my property to handle as I saw fit.

An Enchantress in Aisling's court sent me an invitation to her adult niece's 21st birthday party. She had heard the legends of the proficiency of dragons in the past and had recently come into a bit of money. She danced around it in her prudish wording, but she wanted to know how much I would charge to be an eye candy boy toy for the party and then to deflower her niece after the party ended. In her words, "It's about time that Cindy got over herself and became a woman. I'm sure you'll give her the best time money can buy." I would not be calling the phone number she left.

The vampire baroness Lady Katharina Lothar von Metternich inquired about the possibility of acquiring a regular donation of dragon's blood. She didn't put it quite so bluntly, but she wanted to Uber Eats my blood. She wanted me to show up at her estate, let her chow down on my neck while I took care of her other needs, and then shoo me out the door. She managed to spin it as a positive, saying that she could "be very discreet" and that "there was no need for the possibility of a doctor running to the papers with a scandal -- she could take the blood right from the source." She offered me one afternoon a month with each of her daughters, not her biological daughters, but the women she had turned into vampires over her many years. Based on the lengthy contact information she provided, that would have consumed literally all of my free time.

Of course, mixed in with the later messages were several much more appropriate ones. Zoey sent me a friend request and then a message with a twelve-week calendar, my workout plans all laid out for me. Kyle sent me a friend request, a message saying he needed to speak to me, and another panicked incoherent message asking what on earth his sister was talking about. The diner I had eaten at with Beth and Sam, and the sandwich shop I had eaten at with Zoey both sent polite messages thanking me for my patronage. Mallory sent me a friend request.

When I had only a dozen messages left, I felt filthy and really wanted to close my account and bury my head in the sand. I had long since turned the profile setting for accepting new proposals and all of its variations to false. I wanted to just go back to being a simple college student worrying about what I was doing in the future, not a power player on the political and economic stage being propositioned over what royalties would be appropriate to name fancy food dishes after me.

That's when I opened the message. The timestamp read only an hour ago, and it wasn't a business proposal. It was an invitation.

Esteemed Master Anderson,

We here at The Ether Congregation hope this message finds you well. We are pleased to cordially welcome you to our great community in the broader Delaware Valley area. It would bring us nothing but joy to be able to count the most magnificent dragon of our time as a patron of our services. We are the largest supplier of specialized labor and skillset acquisitions on the Eastern Seaboard, and it would be an immense honor to offer our available catalog to the greatest and most influential new being.

Fredrik Litteer,

Senior President, Community Relations

The Ether Congregation, GDV

A second message had arrived within milliseconds of that one, impersonal and formulaically inviting me to a presentation in three weeks. It suggested I peruse their online offerings to prepare myself before the banquet and offered a link to do so.

The invitation's vague wording and confusing nature filled my stomach with doubt and suspicion, but I clicked the link anyway. The most disgusting, reprehensible catalog of 'goods' I have ever been shown opened up in front of me.

A dozen mugshots, photographs of various humans and magical beings appeared on the screen. Under each was listed a designation, an estimated age, a brief description of skills and abilities, place of birth, and a list of previous residences. And then the number of prior owners and estimated price at auction.

Simply because I was a dragon, I had been invited to join a cabal of human traffickers and slavers. My mouth filled with cotton, and my stomach rolled like a fighter jet performing an evasive maneuver.

Because I realized I was no better than them.

I had been doing this already.

I tripped getting out of the chair, and landed on my knees roughly, my shin bursting into pain, before scrambling out through the door and down the hallway. I pushed open the bathroom door and slapped my hand against the light switch carelessly. Thankfully, I somehow connected with my target, and the room was illuminated. In a flash, I was hunched over the toilet, forcefully vomiting everything that had ever been inside me into the porcelain bowl.

As my first retch echoed around the bathroom, Beth burst through the doorway behind me, Sam only a few steps behind her.

"Oh baby, oh baby, what happened? What's going on? Oh, James..."

I couldn't answer her, but I forced a thought over our connection. I wasn't okay, that was for sure, but I would be eventually. It had nothing to do with her or Sam. I would explain when I was done.

She rubbed my back and stood next to me as I emptied myself. Even as I began simply dry heaving, nothing remaining inside me to actually eject, she attempted to comfort me. Sam left briefly but returned carrying a box of tissues, a glass of water, and a concerned expression on her face.

It took nearly ten minutes, but I eventually calmed down. I rinsed my mouth with the water, blew my nose, and brushed my teeth without saying anything. I knew who my next words had to go to.

When I looked in the mirror over the bathroom sink and was no longer visually disgusted by what I saw, I stepped back into the hallway and took measured steps to the dining room, trying to contain my self-loathing. Evgenia and Cynthia were sitting at the table, each with an assortment of documents. They had been discussing something, but silence fell as I entered the room, both of them looking to see if I was alright. Beth and Sam followed behind me, confused and concerned.

"Ev. Ev, I'm sorry. I release you from your contract with me. I'm sorry."

Instead of the subdued happiness I had hoped for, or the confusion I had expected, Evgenia looked at me in horror. Her eyes filled with fear and regret, and I suddenly wondered if my impulsive actions had once again hurt someone I cared for.