The Divine Gambit Ch 02

2. You Might Be A Dragon

"James, I have my suspicions you might be a dragon."

Cynthia navigated the city highway interchanges, leaving the passing lane and engaging the cruise control now that we were on the long, straight, flat section of the road. She continued clenching the steering wheel like it owed her money, clearly apprehensive over my reaction to her suggestion. I supposed that was the starting point, and she was now open to my questions. She had given me some time to think about what I wanted to ask but had thrown a wrench in my plans with that announcement.

I furrowed my brow as I responded to her, "But what does that mean? I'm clearly not a giant, flying, fire-breathing lizard. Wouldn't exactly need your car for this trip if I was."

"I suspect that something has prevented you from fully merging with your dragon's soul. There is a beast inside you -- I think you met them last night -- that is just as much you as this human body and mind are. In a normal situation, you would've always been aware of it, and by the time you reached adulthood, you would've grown used to them being there -- it would be as much a part of you as your legs are now."

Outside of my circumstances, that idea made sense -- if I had grown up with it always being there, I wouldn't have found it weird to have a second thought process running all the time. "I did notice that when it, for lack of better words, went to sleep..." I paused, unsure of how to accurately describe what I had experienced. "I felt alone. Like when you get home at the end of the day, take your shoes off, and realize you had grown used to them being there, but now your feet feel so exposed."

"Really? That's awfully fast to grow so acquainted. Usually takes months. Then again, your answers to my panel of questions were exceptionally detailed and intricate. Usually, new awakenings can give some vague approximation of a single emotion, but you were able to get individual thoughts and reasonings. Maybe he's been below the surface, merging with you for a while but just remaining out of sight. Perhaps he's been growing the entire time but couldn't interact with you before yesterday."

Her surprise at something unusual was, unfortunately, meaningless to me because everything here was abnormal at best, unbelievable and incomprehensible at worst, so I ignored her remarks. I didn't have any frame of reference for what she was saying -- I didn't think she was just leading me on or flattering me for the sake of it, but it's not like I could completely disregard that possibility.

"Cynthia, why are we going to Philadelphia?"

She sighed audibly, and her words carried some resentment. "Bureaucracy. We need to get you registered and establish your mythic id, and oh, I just hope you love paperwork that you sign with your blood."

That seemed off to me. If I had legal documents to sign in the past, there was a local courthouse for the township or a branch of the DMV pretty close by. Unless it was a federal or international issue, I probably wouldn't have to cross a county border. If there were enough magically inclined individuals for there to be a government and paperwork to fill out, surely there was a closer place. Sam clenching her jaw to stop herself from saying something also suggested that Cynthia wasn't being entirely truthful.

"Why Philadelphia, then? Seems awfully far just to cross some ts on official documents and get a photo id made."

Cynthia took a deep breath as if mentally preparing an answer she wished she didn't have to give.

"I don't want to mislead you, James. I want to answer anything you ask, but there are things I'm also not supposed to tell you. I bet you'll figure them out anyways -- Sam always said you were pretty quick." Sam blushed nicely at her mother's outing that I had been a conversation topic and tried to push herself into the seat, away from the gap in the center.

Cynthia smiled at her daughter's embarrassment, saying, "We're going to Philadelphia because of what you are. We have two significant reasons to bring you to the regional Seat of Power -- think of that as a state capital. Our lines don't exactly align with what you know. Mythics tend to live a long time -- norms redraw the lines a dozen times a century, and we don't bother keeping up with every change. Philadelphia was the most important city on the east coast once, and that was where the Seat was established."

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense. So, what are those two reasons?"

"The first is quite simple. If you are a dragon -- I'm not 100% confident, but we've eliminated every other reasonable option pretty soundly -- you'd be the only known one in North America and one of a half dozen worldwide. There are a pair of twin girls in Brazil, a couple in northern France, and a crotchety old man who moves around southeast Asia. I think he's spent the last decade in Kuala Lumpur. That's it. Those are all of the publically known dragons. It's theoretically possible that another is hiding, given that you exist, but the likelihood is quite low.

" As for the second reason, I don't want to confirm your nature until we're well away from any population center. You've got more in your tank than anyone I've ever met. You awakened yesterday and don't have the first iota of what you're doing, so I can't trust you to demonstrate safely. Your spark is dormant right now after arguing with you over my questions earlier, you emptied your mana reserves enchanting Beth somehow, and you're wearing a suppression enchantment. Yet you are still lighting up the entire spectrum like a college of mages in a distributed spellwork. This also makes me think you're a dragon. While, in theory, with an infinite number of mythics, there could be a wererat or dryad with that much juice to push with, you usually fall in the general range of your type, and dragons are up near the top. Just like the human body can't run a three-minute mile, it also can't support the amount of energy you are for any length of time.

"Mighty beings, and those who cause specific security concerns, must meet and swear fealty to the Seat. Because of your potential, I have to bring you there. I'm not going to lie to you; I'm escorting you there because you're dangerous. If you don't act out on that power, you'll simply be integrated into our society and treated royally.

"It's a gilded cage sort of scenario -- you might have the power alone to disrupt every magical mechanism you wished to, so you become an integral part of the system. They're situationally obliged to make your life pleasant to placate and disincentivize you from taking power yourself. If you become a necessary part of their structure, toppling it would mean harming yourself.

"So, we're going to Philadelphia to meet with the Seat because of you. You need protection and training, and they're the only ones with the command to do it."

That was quite unnerving. I didn't want to meet people and be paraded around like a spectacle or held in a black-site lab, never to see the sun again. It sounded like that's what I was heading for.

"Why did Beth need to come?"

"Somehow, without knowing anything about what you were doing, you've layered enchantments on her. I don't know what your dragon interpreted your intentions as or how it possibly did that. Enchanting typically requires decades of routine practice, and it can be difficult for expert enchanters to tie magic to a living thing. She has so much intertwined with her that I can't sense her anymore. I don't think you should be separated, and the Seat will know how to proceed."

At the mention of being separated, Beth tightened her grasp around me, her scared green eyes looking up desperately at me.

"Beth, what were you doing in your life before yesterday?"

She answered quietly, as if the answer was only for me, "I was working at the grocers on Winton, but they would only let me do part-time. Wasn't really enough to get by on my own. I had tried to get classes at the local community college before this semester started, but when I talked to someone there, they asked for an address to put in my file, and I sort of freaked out on them and ran out. I was couch surfing and barely making it like that, so I kinda gave up on that idea. I had been staying with Paul -- the guy you fought -- for like three months now. Started off fine enough, but I kept getting roped into his plans. He never had a real job either, just running games around borrowing money from one person to pay another back.

"He gave me a check for like fourteen thousand dollars two weeks ago; wanted me to deposit it in a specific account. He asked me to do it because there's a Western Union at the grocery, so I could do it after my shift on my way home. I didn't ask anything about it -- I didn't want to know. Then he sent me back each day afterwards with small money order receipts to cash. Then those guys showed up asking for money. I had given it back to him every time I got back from work. I knew it was something wrong, but he would get so upset if I ever questioned it, and I didn't have any other place to go." She watched my face desperately the entire time she answered, her viridian eyes searching for something from me. I didn't know how to react as I realized it was possibly the longest I had heard her speak since we met. One thought crossed my mind.

"Should you call your manager to let them know you won't be there?"

"I guess; He was kind of a dick, though."

"Don't really want him reporting you missing, do we? I should probably send some texts, too. Cynthia, how long will we be in Philadelphia for?"

Cynthia gave a forced laugh that highlighted her discomfort at the question. She responded with some trepidation, "It's not up to me, but I wouldn't plan on returning to the life you knew."

"Oh," was all I had available to respond with. I guess that made some sense; if I was being escorted to the regional political leader irrespective of my own will, it would be unlikely that they would just let me wander back to school next week. It wasn't every day you found out you were a power player in a world you had only just learned of. Still, I was left concerned with something, so I asked, "Was the plan to have us give a nice Irish exit to our previous lives? Disappear, and everyone just forgets we existed? What would our parents think? I guess the roommate in my brain was right, and that question wasn't hypothetical at all."

Cynthia looked visibly remorseful. "I'm sorry. I know it's awful to do, but if I let you know everything up front, you'll be inclined to make decisions that will just hurt them in the long run. There are specialists who have the task of cleaning up loose ends. With every situation being unique, they are exceptionally skilled and delicate. This is normally easier when you're overwhelmed with the existence of magic and the trip you're taking is a fifteen-minute cross-town excursion." She tried to smile at me through the mirror. "I'm sorry. I know it's not easy. If you want to send some messages saying something came up and you had to go away for some reason, I'm not going to stop you. I'll ask that you be vague and not make it sound like you plan to return anytime soon."

Her near-routine delivery of the response didn't take away from her sincerity. It was clear that it was something she had practiced specifically because she found it objectionable. I also understood why Sam had called her mother to handle this. Beyond elevating my case up the food chain, there was no way she would have been able to tell me I needed to leave everyone behind. Even now, her face was buried down, unwilling to chance meeting my eye in the mirror.

Beth seemed indifferent to the idea of last contact and put her phone away. I supposed you didn't end up in her position if you had people that genuinely cared about you and your wellbeing. I sent a couple of messages, one to my parents, one to my landlord, a generic email to my professors, and one final too-short text to Kyle. With that, I put my phone away and realized I had just cut ties with my life as I had known it. Except, I hadn't entirely, because Sam and Cynthia were still a thread I could cling to. Beth had done precisely that yet somehow seemed less bothered than I was.

Half an hour passed in silence, only the sound of the car distracting me from my thoughts. At one point, Cynthia and Sam whispered to each other, but it was clearly not intended for Beth and me, and I watched the fields roll by out the window without listening. I was being dragged to a city I had never been to, to meet someone who would decide my future, with no chance of refusing. Cynthia's sympathy didn't soften the blow as much as it felt like it should've.

The silence was broken in a very strange way. For the first time since we left the diner, Sam turned around and asked me, "Can you just hold these for me?" She held out three small gems, perhaps the size of a fingernail apiece, each rough and unpolished. Two were colorless, while the third was green, but they were all fuzzy and faded. Looking at them reminded me of smoked glass -- a hazy translucent transference of light. I didn't see any obvious issues with it, but as I started to reach out to take them, Cynthia admonished her daughter.

"Samantha O'Brien! You will not take advantage of your friends like that. Tell him what you are asking him to do."

Sam's face lit up with a flash of anger, and I could tell she almost called out her mother's hypocrisy before her eyes fell down to the floor, mortified at the outburst she only barely contained. She stumbled over her words when she addressed me, "Sorry, J. I just kinda figured since you're leaking power everywhere, maybe you could charge these for me."

"That seems reasonable to me. Is there anything I have to do?"

"Just hold them for a bit. Keep them on your person and in your mind. I'll get them back from you eventually." I took the jewels from her hands and rolled them over in my fingers.

Cynthia seemed just as let down by her daughter's explanation as by my quick acceptance. "Samantha, you need to tell him the rest. How much would you have paid to have one of those charged? James, you need to know the value of your work. Even if it's easy for you, you need to get some kind of payment out of it, or you'll be inundated with so many insignificant requests that combined, you'd have a Sisyphean backlog of meaningless work."

Sam cautiously offered, "Well, if I was just paying, maybe a hundred fifty each?"

Cynthia pondered for a moment before nodding. "That seems reasonable. James, most things in our world aren't paid for like that. There's a lot of bartering, trading favors, or if you have to buy something, you'll use some kind of bulk goods instead of currency."

"That seems inconvenient. Why not just continue using currency?"

"We have rules against manipulating markets that have norm interests. Shifting massive amounts of money around in trading deals -- or just removing the amounts we would need from norm circulation -- would have consequences the Seats wouldn't be happy with. Favors ensure everything is contained in our world. Materials disappearing can be explained as being consumed in some failed production process or lost at sea or any of a thousand mundane means."

"I guess that makes some sense."

Cynthia accepted my remark and continued by addressing her daughter, "So Sam, how do you intend to pay your friend here?"

Before Sam could respond, I did. "Actually, I have a proposition. She was right; if this is working and I'm charging them, it must be with an energy I'm just releasing anyways because I don't feel any different. I might need some money if I'm leaving my past life behind, but what I truly need is a friend who understands both worlds. I don't know anything about the world you're dragging me into, no offense, and I think Sam will have earned her charged gemstones many times before the week is out, helping me maneuver through this transition."

Cynthia smiled at my response, "Perhaps you'll negotiate just fine."

"No real choice but to figure it out as it goes. You don't happen to have a 'Magic Society Introduction for Dummies' hanging around, do you?" Beth snorted at my light-hearted comment. It felt right to hear that from her; perhaps she was finally allowing herself to relax. I noticed myself appreciating the sound -- and wondering why I felt that way. I had just met her, so why was it meaningful to me that she was comfortable here?

Pushing those thoughts aside, I looked at the gemstones I was rolling between my fingers. I could see my fingers more clearly through them now than just a few moments ago. Even as I held them and looked at them now, I thought I could see some of the luster returning. It appeared to function as a battery-level display feature for magic instead of electricity.

"So Cynthia, I do have a pretty big question. How am I a dragon if my parents clearly aren't?"

"I don't know. That is usually how it works, passed down from your parents. Maybe they are dragons, but something stopped their merging, and they rejected it and grew apart from it. That usually leads to death or some other pretty severe issues, though. I met your mother through the PTA a few times, lovely woman, but absolutely no spark there at all, so I don't think that is the case anyways, but it's not like I ever noticed yours. There are other options, but they aren't understood, mostly because of how uncommon they are. Sometimes a gift will skip several generations before reappearing. Sometimes humans from otherwise mundane families give birth to a child with a spark. I don't want to blindly guess how you came to be -- human records of dragons are incomplete and unreliable at best, and the Seats aren't sharing what they know because of how powerful and unique you are. We can't run tests on your offspring anyway -- I think you'd be the first one born since the 1600s."

"I was a little worried I'd be turned into a science project and tucked away in a lab somewhere. You don't think that's what awaits us in Philly, is it?"

Cynthia made a face that suggested she wasn't confident in her answer, "I don't think so -- more likely you'll be put on display and shown off. You could be completely hidden away from the public eye if they think that's for the best. Frankly, I'm unsure what awaits us besides meetings, paperwork, and court drama over how to get you to fall in line."

"Cool, just a social pariah and public spectacle then. I guess I'll learn to deal with it." That did make me think, though. Everyone in the diner had openly gawked at Beth and me, but Sam and Cynthia remained stoic. I guess I used to know Sam reasonably well and had met Cynthia a few times, but they also knew way more than the spectators we had.

"Why aren't you and Sam starstruck like everyone else at the diner? They didn't even know half the truth and still couldn't help themselves."

"A couple of reasons. The main one is training. My job is to bring newly awakened individuals to where they need to be and help ease their transition. Think of it like being a maitre d' at a starred restaurant in Manhattan. In the public eye, you're forgettable and invisible, but you still interact with and assist particularly high-profile individuals daily. Another reason is that, at the end of the day, I'm still just a silly suburban human girl. I'm always freaking out over whomever I just met. I contain it and fall into my trained behaviors. Everyone in this world is a wild, amazing, wonderful thing to me, but to some of the characters in that diner, you were the first thing in decades they saw that made them feel fear. To a human, a baseball and the moon are completely different. If they landed on an ant, how would it know the difference?"

"I think I get it. Meeting the mayor and the president are orders of magnitude different, but to a child, they're just someone your parents think is important wearing suits. On the scale of things, you're closer to the child. Sam, when will I know if these are done? They've stopped changing." I held up one of the gems I had been holding to our eye level. It was flawlessly transparent now, and the edges were perfectly smoothed, almost like it had been manufactured for jewelry.