The Divine Gambit Ch. 12

I sighed. I knew there wasn't such a possibility, given that Cynthia and Aisling had both already given me the same information, but I had a lingering sliver of hope remaining that Antonin knew something they didn't. It was dashed now.

"I think I might not be a dragon, then. I mean, I am a dragon, but not entirely a dragon. Which we already knew. I have the human portion, obviously, but I think I have a third part that's something else. Because I think I made a deal with something Wednesday night. It came to me in a dream, showed me a bunch of things I didn't understand entirely, and then asked for my permission to do something. I think it joined with me, somehow."

"Who have you told about this?"

"Beth, Sam, Cynthia, Evgenia, and then I mentioned it to Aisling. She mentioned the old gods."

The greying archivist scoffed, "Bah! 'The old gods.' All evidence for their interventions in our plane of existence conveniently dried up as soon as our civilizations formed permanently and writing systems began developing. They disappeared as soon as we created reliable methods of durable information storage. A load of nonsense, that. Regardless of her beliefs, tell me exactly what happened in your dream."

I did. I explained everything I had seen while in the dream vision and how the entity seemed hesitant to interact with me but felt out of time. I described the various outcomes it showed me and how an uncountable majority of them ended with the star destroyed. I relayed how horrifying and disgusting the darkened glowing stars were with the disfigured crown on the dragon's injured head. I described how the entity had begged for my assistance, and when I finally relented, it seemed to join me, but in the end, I was alone in the dark, lost and confused.

Antonin took notes while I was speaking but never interjected. When I had concluded, he thought for another few moments before offering his thoughts.

"The good news, drakeling, is that it is unlikely to be a demonic possession. They would not have asked for your permission and would have shown you better outcomes when you helped it. A demon would be unlikely to show you that accepting its assistance would lead to hardship. The bad news is that I have never heard of anything else like this. I will make my inquiries as delicately as possible, and you should tell no one else about this."

Antonin paused for a moment and then continued, a new level of vigor and intensity growing in his voice.

"This changes things significantly, drakeling, because I can no longer trust my information. Of course, none of it was infallible to begin with, but now everything is in question. Everything I've told you about your life as a dragon came with a margin of error before, but now it is infinitely large. Document everything. Ask me every question you can think of. We shall perhaps not identify what exactly you interacted with, but we shall record all of the results for anyone in the future."

I understood now -- Antonin was a scholar at heart, and I had unintentionally given him something to study. Something tremendous and imposing and unpredictable, something genuinely worthy of his acumen. He had been interested before -- being able to conclusively answer questions about draconic anatomy had been a worthwhile pursuit -- but now he had something that he believed no one else had ever documented.

I continued to relay my past two days to Antonin, giving him all the context necessary to answer my following questions. I described my experience training with Zoey, shapeshifting with Zoey and Mallory, and the effects of my shifting. I then repeated my tumultuous invitation from Aisling before continuing to the lunchtime conversation with Zoey and how she was worried that I had been deceiving her and my frustration from the circular discussion.

I then told him about massaging Sam and how I had used mana in my fingertips to share with the redhead. Antonin, surprisingly, offered no reaction as he continued making notes for himself. I explained how when I had sex with Sam this morning, she initially had a similar response to my first time with Beth, and then she had a very different reaction.

"Do you know why Sam seemed fine after a few moments before suddenly becoming intoxicated and infused with energy?"

"Acute Mana Overconsumption."

Antonin responded as if the answer was painfully obvious, not even lifting his eyes from the page he was writing in. Sam facepalmed reflexively so hard I was worried she may have injured herself.

"Oh my fucking god! How did I not see that? It was so obvious!" She exclaimed.

Beth and I gawked dimly as Antonin attempted to hide his smirk from Sam's reaction.

"Could one of you spare an explanation for the unenlightened?"

Sam slid her hand down from her face, which already had a nice red outline, and nodded as she began explaining, "So, witches and wizards and creatures that use mana to fuel their magic have magic conduits in their body. Think of them like a parallel system to your cardiovascular system -- you have a way of bringing it into your body, then you cycle it around and get all of your body fueled, and then you have a way of getting rid of waste. Before this morning, I had a really limited mana-blood-esque transfer system. Tiny capacity for storage and limited bandwidth for transfer. Yeah, that's a reasonable comparison. Anyway, something about what we did filled me to the brim and well beyond. My system didn't know what to do with it, and I was overwhelmed. Literally drunk on J's juice."

Sam played into that one, smirking at Beth as she said it. Then she turned to Antonin and asked her own question.

"I'm confused about why it faded. I didn't burn through nearly enough to return to my previous level. I used some energy on flashy displays while I was affected, but I have way, way more stored now than I ever could have contemplated yesterday. It's like James somehow improved my mana conduits with the excess energy instead of simply overfilling me. It didn't feel like overdrawing from a crystal, which is why I didn't think of it. Do you know of anything that would do that?"

"Nothing so effective or so precise. There are several therapies involving transplanting arterial material from recently deceased mages with high capacity, but they offer significant risk."

"And, why would increasing my capacity make it easier to do things besides my normal empathy skills?" Sam asked. "It didn't feel like pulling from a gemstone to power a spell inefficiently like I had done in school. Everything felt natural, easy like my own powers, not simply overcome with raw mana."

Antonin paused, then shook his head and grumbled, "I don't know. It sounds like you were utilizing his pool, as though you had retrieved an amount and stored it inside you. But doing so that way would taint it with your purpose, so I do not understand how this was done."

I had a question to ask, "Why didn't Beth have this intoxicated mana overload response?"

Sam blushed and smelled embarrassed, which was immediately made clear when Antonin bluntly responded, "She doesn't have any mana sensitivity."

The four of us sat silently for a moment, the only noises coming from the precise movements of Antonin's pen against the paper before he looked up and said, "The energy was still utilized. Her enchantment has been growing since I first observed it. Elizabeth doesn't have the sensitivity to recognize it, but I suspect it was utilized to strengthen her protections, whereas, in Samantha's case, it was used to improve her mana connection. Not that the growth alone would explain the sudden broadening of her abilities, but it explains some of the events."

"Is this going to happen every time Sam and I, uh, engage like that?" Sam blushed as I asked.

"It's likely to continue happening but to significantly lesser degrees. Considering you massively expanded her capacity for controlling mana in a single interaction somehow, she can now more readily accept future energy injections. Which may contribute to her growth even further, or that may have been a one-time side effect of having such a disparity. It's hard to say at present."

"Is something like this going to happen to everyone else I ever interact with in that way? I mean, the momentary dying and then reawakening with this ancient bond form and swapped soul pieces and shared feelings. Not that I want to be selfish or insensitive to Beth or Sam, but can I hypothetically have sex with anyone else and not permanently tie themselves to me?"

Deep in thought, Antonin paused his writing for a few moments before answering, "I do not know. You need to find out. I would put forward a hypothesis that, given that it only happens immediately following the first complete intercourse while you want them to be with you, it is something you have control over. When you eventually incorporate Zoey into your life, if she is next, I suggest that you mentally resist the idea of pulling her into your life during your first engagement with her. I imagine some part of you is merging with them more than physically during these interactions. I also imagine you're not interested in inviting me to observe as an academic during your first intercourse with a woman."

Beth scoffed at the idea and then covered her mouth in embarrassment while Sam visibly cringed at both the concept of being observed and Beth's vocal reaction. Antonin ignored both of them as I continued asking my questions.

"Ahh, yeah, that would be fairly weird. Speaking of my time with Zoey, which you sound awfully confident of--"

"She is a were and mated to you. That she hasn't followed you home or pulled you into a closet and copulated with you already is a testament to her mental strength. Her body, her mind, her soul are all reaching out to her consciousness and pointing at you, saying, 'That man is our lover, our owner, our master, our caregiver, our mate; Why, oh why, do you defy him and resist?' Unless you do something to traumatize her opinion of you now, it is a matter of when rather than if."

"Right. So, do you believe she is likely to have a Sam-like drunken mana overdose reaction or a Beth-like less obvious benefits with no apparent reaction? Or something else?"

He sighed, "Given that she is a were, and the profession she has taken, she is likely to have relatively minimal mana sensitivity. I have no reason to suggest that she will follow Sam. Of course, she has no multilayered impenetrable obscured enchantings that no one has ever documented before either, so I cannot suggest these would be empowered by your essence akin to Beth. I do not know, and we will not know until it happens."

I moved on to an adjacent topic that I hoped would actually have answers. "Why did I want to pet Zoey and care for her like she was a lost dog in the wild and I was a caveman when she transformed?"

"The initial transformation of weres releases an instinctive response based on their corresponding species and their relationship with you. Given that you are her mate, it is no surprise that an impulse towards gentle care was your reaction. I imagine that your draconic sense suppressed the feelings from Mallory. As a bat, you should have felt slight feelings of unease and distrust that you were being observed and judged."

"Huh. I felt those while in the gym, but not when she transformed. Do dragons have those same transformation effects? Whenever I've engaged with my dragon soul, the women around me have had some obvious reactions."

Antonin nodded, "It's certainly possible that the effect is related. It has been hypothesized that Dragons and Weres have some unique magical shared origin. With the scarcity and disinclination of previous dragons for study in this area, no conclusion could be reached. That your aura causes sexual satisfaction among available females is not surprising."

"God, phrasing it like that makes me feel disgusting. Whatever, I suppose it's just something for me to keep in mind for the future. I had another question about Zoey: Why would she feel that I was patronizing her with pity? Why on earth would I pity her? She's badass."

Antonin's features softened slightly, and he set down his pen entirely as he struggled to think of a more sensitive way to answer the question.

"She should be the one telling you of her circumstances, but I will offer a simple generic explanation from which you can speculate. I have told you how weres are bound to an animal and share characteristics of their shared origin. Specifically related to lifespan. As you so eloquently put it, Sergeant Lyon is a 'badass.' She is such because she is so incredibly intertwined with her wolf's soul that she may be only wolf in a human shell. Wolves live for ten years, perhaps several more in good circumstances, while in captivity. She is nearing 19 years. You can draw the conclusion."

Sam looked incredibly uncomfortable and smelled guilty and upset. Beth and I were silenced by the implications of what Antonin said. Evidently, Sam seemed to think that we had understood the situation already. I certainly hadn't and the haunted look from Beth's green eyes revealed she hadn't either.

Zoey was dying? It explained a lot. It explained how a not-quite nineteen-year-old girl was already a government service leader if she had been an adult for years already in this world. It also explained why she was so upset about me having wasted her childhood by hiding from her in ignorance. It explained why, even though she was absolutely pissed at me and didn't even slightly trust me, she was moving forwards anyway. She was out of time to take safe options. Jesus Christ, what a mess.

"Why is this happening now? I knew Zoey as a kid, and as a teenager I was regularly at her house to hang out with her brother. Why is she only reacting like this around me now?"

"Why are you suddenly the most potent arch dragon the world has ever documented despite having a firmly mundane childhood and there being no indication of outside tampering? Why did Beth become covered in protective archaic wardings when you touched her? Drakeling, if I had concrete answers for you, I would have simply given Aisling a dossier for you to read so I could spend my time elsewhere. These questions are interesting for me as well, but they are interesting because as of yet I know not the answers. The answers do not exist, but you need to keep asking the questions, so that we can document them ourselves."

I nodded. I knew that would be the case, but it didn't hurt the ask. Antonin might give sharp retorts to my questions, but he didn't actually seem perturbed by my asking. He simply responded with blunt candor of a man tired of playing politely.

"Why does everyone who learns I'm a dragon react as if I just told them I was the tax collector? Why do they hate me prematurely if I'm the first dragon here in years?"

"Dragons are synonymous with power and authority. Sometimes tyrannical power and authority. Think of viewing yourself as a billionaire politician. You have both the political influence and the material means to make real changes in the world. All of your kin have disproportionately made the world better for themselves instead of the everyman. Everyone innately knows that. You might have the power to change the world to be better for them, but their daily life is still unsatisfactory by comparison. That lets them place the blame on you. It's not an indictment of you -- Everyone in your position should look out for themselves first. They see your actions as you looking out for yourself only instead of primarily."

I nodded. Generic classism I could understand in theory, even if I knew it would take forever for me to grow used to being hated for what I was. Casual discrimination wasn't exactly something I was accustomed to from my previous life.

"Am I making Beth and Sam gay?"

I blurted out the question while my mind lingered on the previous topic, unsubtly ravaging the atmosphere. That wasn't my intent, and all three of the people at the table with me patiently waited for my needed elaboration as my blunt phrasing echoed around the otherwise vacant library.

"I mean, am I inducing some sort of casual acceptance of latent homosexual adjacent behavior? Not gay exactly, but perhaps more tolerant of another female. Beth was upset by Sam the first night, threatened by how attractive Sam is and how she shared history with me. This morning they were perfectly content sharing a bed with a reasonable amount of Beth participation while Sam and I had sex. Am I molding them into some kind of idyllic harem partner against their will?"

Surprisingly, Beth answered while Antonin was still contemplating his approach.

"James, you know very few people are actually like 100% straight, right? I've played with girls before. Muff diving for rent really wasn't a bad deal. I wasn't scared of you and Sam. I was scared of you and Sam pushing me out into the cold because I was no longer wanted. I told you already, Sam's hot, and I like her a lot now that she isn't acting like she hates you."

Antonin had formulated a response while Beth answered, and he offered his opinion when she finished speaking, "It is likely, drakeling, that your nature is slightly tempering the worst aspects of personality to make this situation more livable. Your emotional connection and willingness to communicate will take the sting out of any jealousy and can cut any growing, lingering resentment off at the root before it has a chance to develop into something truly nasty.

"Are you 'molding them into some kind of replaceable plaything, a member of a cast of girls you can choose from?' That is really what you want to ask, isn't it? I would argue that you are doing nothing so insidious. You may be gently encouraging towards that style of life by providing a safe, secure environment where their needs are met and caring, loving partners are around to help them and make them feel wanted. But by investing so much of your time and energy into nurturing them, by being yourself and devoting yourself to their needs, it is mutually beneficial and, frankly, idyllic. Actually idyllic, not the loss of agency perversion of the ideal you were referencing when you asked."

It made sense. If they were meant to be highly replaceable broodmares, there would be no need to spend any time caring for their emotional well-being. The dragon and I both wanted that. We had differing ideas of going about it, but he had always deferred to me on the matter. If I could just pheromone away all of their problems and turn them into mindless servants, he wouldn't be doing that.

As I thought this through, he spoke up. Of course, he didn't have that level of control, he argued. Mind magic was dangerous and imprecise in the best of times. Our mates would be highly vetted and carefully chosen to be compatible with the rest of our family and us, and then we would ensure they received nothing but the best from there on out. I cringed a bit at his suggestion that there would be additional mates, but he remained steadfast. We would need them, and they would need us. It was already decided.

"Alright. I have an innate revulsion when you say I am molding them, but I understand what you mean. The natural sort of way you change over time based on who you're around, rather than a draconic mind-altering substance way. I guess I can live with that."

I paused for a moment and swallowed. I had one more big question to ask, but I figured I should get the three little ones out of the way first.

"Do I have to eat to stay alive? Do I have any dietary requirements for sustaining myself? Or does the consuming mana immortal magic body thing just handle it all for me?"

Antonin rolled his head back and forth before he answered, indicating that the answer was likely much more complicated than he was going to give me.