The Divine Gambit Vol 02 Ch 01

1. On Winter's Wings

The most frustrating, though admittedly amusing in hindsight, factor of Cynthia's bombshell was that the dragons weren't going to show up this week. Being so intimately familiar with the processes surrounding relocating various entities, Sam's mom didn't realize the rest of us interpreted her warning as an imminent event. It was only the next day, when trying to plan where we could possibly host such a gathering, whether we even had time to rent a ballroom, and how we would possibly plan food for such a large number of people (and the unconfirmable variety of diets) at the drop of a hat, that she realized her mistake.

"I'm sorry, James," she said, stifling a humorless chuckle as we sat around the table. "I appear to have misinformed you by omission. While this is something we need to plan soon, it doesn't need to be done today. The dragons need to apply for temporary residence, explain why they're coming here to both their authorities and ours, likely argue at least one round of automatic rejections -- it's going to take some time. A month would be optimistic; two or three is more likely."

Which was a good thing. The guillotine I had imagined crashing towards my neck the day before wasn't yet falling catastrophically, even if it was still hanging above me. Relieving the pressure by letting us know the due date on this task was both still up in the air and a ways off still had some unintended consequences, unfortunately. No longer under an impossible deadline, scrambling like headless chickens to half-ass what we could do in the short time available meant that we got to take a step back and really look at the size of the mountain we had to climb. Before, only able to see a single hand-hold at a time as we tried desperately to scale it, we couldn't see the magnitude of the entire problem. Now, we had enough time to let it sink in.

Unfortunately, the ambiguity of their arrival date and the confusing, one-way nature of the channels by which we had communication meant that no one had specific steps we needed to take, at least not yet. Zenya contacted the hotel Beth and I had changed at before we met Aisling for the first time, and after they confirmed things with Aisling's office, they concocted a tentative plan for using their ballroom to host our little meetup. Since I didn't have a place of my own to host the dragons and their retinues, I felt it was for the best to do it publicly. It had the added side-effect of being a largely neutral place for us to meet; at least, as neutral as anywhere in Philadelphia could be. Until we had more firm dates, we couldn't really take other actions, which left me going through the motions of the routine I had established, trying the best that I could to prepare.

Fortunately, the uncomfortable ambiguity left us enough time to handle several other dangling issues. Less fortunately, one of those issues was the wizard I had endured during the house meeting at Aisling's estate, who eventually reached out to Beth and Sam about the potential for an independent evaluation of their living situation.

Sam, not exactly politely, but well within the acceptable diction of professional exchanges, declined, informing the wizard that she had made no complaints to the authorities and had no concerns at this time. She outlined her awareness of the resources available should a problem arise in the future. If he wanted someone to contact for further information, Cynthia was available to discuss our living arrangements. After all, she was the case handler for my transition, had extensive and intimate knowledge of both standard proceedings and our unique circumstances, and could verily say whether or not there had been any unjustified improprieties or transgressions that deserved to be brought before an official. She had Zenya look over her response several times, slightly workshopping the language so that it would brush right up against the line of being inflammatory without crossing it.

Beth, on the other hand, pulled no punches and did not ask Zenya to screen her words -- if they found her response incendiary and combative, good. She told the wizard in no uncertain terms that she was not at all inclined to interact with him or anyone from his offices at any point without significant word done on their end to demonstrate that they were acting in good faith. How dare he suggest that she had been mistreated since arriving in Philadelphia? If he cared as much as he was pretending to, she reminded him that she had always been a member of his house, even when we lived further north and neither of us had been aware of this world's existence. Where was he then if he cared so much about her well-being and her accommodations? Where was he when she spent evenings scrounging for food on the streets? Where was he when she spent nights sleeping at her part-time job, knowing that it would get her fired at some point but having no better option? As far as she was concerned, the only two people who had ever done anything for her were her deceased father and me, and damn this pompous, avaricious man to hell if he was suggesting anything to the contrary. She needed no evaluation but her own, and she was currently living a life better than she had imagined, one that could only be improved now if pushy busybodies with political agendas would leave her alone with her husband. Until she saw him taking strides to help those who needed it, magic or not, he could simply fuck off, because his actions made it painfully clear that he hadn't even a single thought for Beth except as an avenue to badger me with.

Sam's message received the concise, requisite, "We will speak with the listed Ms. O'Brien. Thank you," in response.

Beth's, unsurprisingly, received no response.

I also received a message from Bob apologizing for bothering me but asking permission to visit the apartment. Typically, he wouldn't need approval to see a vampire in his domain, but he didn't know what the precedent was for when a vampire belonged to another house, and my draconic nature certainly encouraged him to proceed with a level of caution and respect he may not have offered everyone else.

The explanation for his prospective stop revolved around a vampire's ability to regenerate with blood. Younger vampires, those turned in the last twenty years or so, tended to be locked in a battle with their predator instincts and, as such, at least in this part of the world, were closely monitored to ensure that they followed the local regulations and were not exposed to unnecessary temptation. Zoey informed me that she had participated in a task force eighteen months ago that successfully captured and contained a very, very fresh vampire -- a woman who had been accidentally turned and then let loose without knowing what she was, proceeding to leave a trail of carnage and other freshly turned women and horrifically distorted ghouls in her wake in her confusion and rage. My werewolf mate didn't comment on what the outcome was, except firmly stating that the outbreak had been contained.

Zenya was not a concern in that regard, at the very least. Older vampires, ones who had conquered their hunger and bent it to their will rather than being controlled by it, still had annual check-ins with the authorities. Bob wasn't entirely sure who the authorities were in this case, though it was either him or me, so he planned to stop by, showing me the forms that needed to be filed and the responses that needed my attention. He stressed that for Zenya, it was a perfunctory formality that would take only fifteen minutes or so. I understood why, when, after we chatted politely for a minute or two at my dining room table, he began asking Zenya the questions for his form.

Was her budgeted blood supply adequate for her needs? Yes, given that she didn't ever use it. In the last 12 months, had she drawn blood from anyone not listed as an approved, personally informed, consenting donor? No. During the previous 12 months, had any of her listed donors suffered adverse effects from either acute or chronic blood overconsumption? No, of course not. At any point in the last year, had any of her listed donors needed medical care or hospitalization as a result of an accidental overconsumption? Nope. Over the previous 12 months, had she had any impulses to turn any woman into a vampire or to turn any man into a thralled ghoul? No. In the last twelve months, had she, intentionally or otherwise, turned any women or men into vampires or ghouls? Not a chance.

Of course, Bob was aware of her aversion to blood -- he had the last twenty years of her blood bank withdrawal history with him as he asked her the questions. Every year's line had two liters of budgeted allocation, an amount he said was the lowest standard volume allocated to any vampire in the region, next to a goose egg in the actual withdrawn column. As the steward for vampires in the land, he was responsible for ensuring every vampire followed the rules, even ones like Zenya who were completely innocent. He looked at me pointedly as he explained that enforcement of these codes was part of the agreement necessary for the acceptance of vampires in the civilized world.

He didn't come right out and say it, being more tactful than that, but he heavily implied that the reason there were a single-digit number of dragons remaining in the world, and that they were individuals kept physically isolated from one and another most of the time, were that such an agreement wasn't reached with us in the past. He certainly didn't mean it as a threat, peacefully sipping a cup of coffee at the table in the apartment I was living in, more as a warning. I couldn't be sure that he knew what was happening, but he was a reasonably well-informed political figure in the area, so it wasn't surprising that he had heard rumors. He was warning me -- be careful when my brethren arrived, because the so-called civilized world had done some irreversible things to dragons that didn't at least performatively bend their knees to the seats in the past.

I smiled politely and thanked him for the advice as he showed me on the document where Zenya needed to sign, and then where the two of us would. I didn't really need the advice, as much as I welcomed the reminder that the world was a dangerous place as I sat beside the woman too scared to tell me her name, who had worn a web of scar tissue for who knows how long because something else had broken her desire to heal herself. Given how everyone else reacted to my presence and what that implied for their opinions on dragons, it seemed incredibly unlikely that I would be falling into cahoots with other wyrms anytime soon. Frankly, I wished they would show up a lot sooner, if only so they could do whatever evaluation they thought was necessary and then begone from my continent, taking their baggage and the associated pressure with them.

Before Bob left, I had him add me to Zenya's list of pre-approved emergency donors. That prompted a prolonged attempt by my vampire PA to decline my suggestion. I finally convinced her that it was for the best when she insisted that I didn't need to do it because she would never ask to utilize it. The response, that this was clearly an emergency measure intended to never be used and that I wasn't going to force her to do anything she wasn't comfortable with but that it would be good to give her legal permission for the astronomically slight possibility of an absolute worst case scenario, was met with begrudging acceptance. I could heal her without it, after all. Sam and Beth came out of the bedroom, hearing what I was feeling and thinking about through our bond, and added their names, as well.

In the meantime, I continued my physical training with Zoey, making progress on the six-week program she had written up for me. She kept me working through a variety of whole-body splits, slowly trimming the volume while increasing the intensity as the weeks progressed. In the third week, once she knew that I was incorporating swimming on my own, even if it wasn't exactly regular, she stopped having me use random pieces of equipment to get my cardio fix during our gym sessions.

Instead, she added an hour of martial training. Unlike the resistance work, it was done exclusively as a human. Zoey was clear with her intention there: while I would eventually do the strength training while half-transformed, feeling the difference between the human shell I typically displayed and the true draconic form hiding just beneath the surface, there was no need to practice fighting while in the dragon form. There wasn't any need to. If I could use my dragon body, the massive, scaled instrument of destruction would have no trouble making my foes reconsider, and if a fight was what they still settled on, my pure instinctive talent in evocation would make anyone besides another dragon reconsider. If I was in an altercation where my options were limited because I was pretending to be only human, I needed training. I did slightly push back, questioning why it was necessary when I was functionally invincible, but Zoey very pointedly informed me that, if any hypothetical enemies ever determined that fact, she wasn't, and neither was Sam. Zenya and Cynthia weren't either. Beth might be, but was I going to gamble on that?

No.

So, she started having me meet with physical readiness trainers who regularly evaluated prospective security force candidates. Twice a week, I met with a portly wereboar, who put me through my paces in striking training. It started similar to any other boxing instruction, as far as I could tell, but because I wasn't an athlete looking to compete in a ring, he quickly shifted into instructing me on every part of fighting while on my feet, adding kicks, leg strikes, and elbows to the syllabus I was following.

That was supplemented by a lithe elf, on the other two exercise days a week, who began instructing me on how to handle an adversary who was already within striking distance. I got a crash course in the basics of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, judo, and Olympic wrestling, where I found that my newfound strength, while certainly an asset, wasn't nearly as helpful as I thought it would be. My grip strength didn't seem to matter when I couldn't hold a pin tightly enough to prevent my teacher from slipping under my arm because I had gripped the wrong spot on them.

Of course, the first two weeks of both lessons were done without involving another person, at least in combat. I spent a lot of time with various bags and dummies, and then setting up holds with my grappling teacher describing, then demonstrating, the techniques before allowing me to move through them at half speed with their cooperation. By the end of the second week, we were working through things where he was resisting me, or he was the one pinning me and I was actively defending myself. We were moving closer to real speed there, but the intensity wasn't there when I knew at any moment I could ask to reset and try again.

It did make me ask Zoey why she hadn't enrolled me in these one-on-one lessons initially. The answer was simple: when she thought I was just a temporary VIP, a more generic strength training and work capacity cardio plan was enough. Now that I was her one and only mate in the whole world, she needed more. She knew exactly what I was -- something no one understood, different even from the other dragons -- and she needed me more prepared, just for her own peace of mind. So, I was being trained like I was a teenaged were coming in on the fast track for a security force position; a raw, physically gifted though technically unrefined student who would be attentive and interested in learning, and one who didn't yet have years of bad habits that needed to be unlearned before better ones could be implemented in their stead. I did ask if the plan for me included firearms training, to which Zoey laughed. Her response could be summarized with 'potentially.' In the far future when things were calm and I had less on my plate, it was an option that could be explored. Until then, adding firearms wasn't a necessary complication, given that I had magic I could use in most circumstances to replace the use-case of any gun.

In addition to the specific physical training I undertook with Zoey, I kept flying with Mallory. Our first lesson outside the training facility wasn't where I thought it would be. After a lesson with Zoey, the bat collected me and brought me to a different underground area on one of the university campuses. I wasn't informed precisely which one, as she spoke to the security guard who came to unlock the entrance for us, and then I was hurried down several flights of stairs into a massive, cylindrical concrete room, large enough in diameter that the central ten feet felt flat. Mallory asked me if I would be able to recharge mana sources that we would use during the lesson today, and though I didn't understand why, I said that wouldn't be a problem. She made me confirm that I had plenty of mana when she asked a second time, seemingly very intent on getting a clear answer from me.

I understood what I was in when she hit a button on a console I hadn't noticed, and a great big fan began whirring up at the far end. We were in a wind tunnel, presumably used by one of the engineering departments (or, more likely, as a joint venture between a majority of the universities in the city).

She spent several minutes having me simply glide, getting comfortable with the feeling of the air moving over my body as I held position relative to the ground. Then, my bat trainer had me touching specific spots on the walls of the facility so that I could practice navigating and reorienting myself with the wind coming from different angles relative to my body. She pushed another button on the console after I had touched several of her targets, and the room was awash with magical energy.

"Force barriers, on the walls and floor," she explained to my confused glance. "They function like padded walls. So that when you crash, it's not just into a cement foundation."

Which was good, because I did crash. Not horribly, but several times, I misjudged the wind's effect on my body and either hit the target on the wall a little too firmly or scraped my scaled chest on the ground as I turned away to find the next marker. The force projections felt like a pillow on a spring -- soft to the initial touch, but the more I pushed into them, the more they pushed back.

Eventually, she turned the big fan at the end of the hall off, though she had me continue flying and chasing targets. Then, suddenly, while she had me chasing a particularly engaging set of six markers that she had established as a pattern earlier, she snapped it back on. It took a moment for it to kick on, and I probably didn't even recognize the sound of the blades starting to whir as fast as I should've. It was still a slow, gradual build-up of wind pressure back to the maximum I had experienced, so it was easy to adjust for. She did that same maneuver several more times, turning the fan on and off as I chased the glowing spots on the walls around the facility.

Then, she caught me by surprise again, as, while I was going through the pattern of six, she kicked the wind back on -- but not from the fan. I looked up, and the fan blades were spinning freely, not pushing the wind at me but simply riding it as it passed through, before I glanced at Mal. She had a smug smile on her face, her thumb on the button.

Her earlier question made sense now. The mana drain from the passive force projection safety measures shouldn't have taken that much energy overall, but if she were instantly conjuring air flow from a preexisting enchantment of some kind, that would definitely need to be refilled. Especially if we were only borrowing the facility under the expectation that the energy we used would be replaced.