Autumn, 2250 CE, a deep cave in northern Finland

  “That is… quite a story, Graayyyavalllia,” Baalhalllu said, carefully injecting just the right amount of skepticism into his voice. “Do you actually believe it?”

  “Believe?” the garnet asked, bewildered.

  “It sounds a little far-fetched,” he said, quite proud of fitting the human modernism into his natural speech.

  Graayyya gave a slight frown. “My lord, I was present for much of it. Which parts do you have difficulty accepting?”

  “Well, quite naturally I struggle to accept the part about the gods speaking through Dauria’s voice. That seems to me more than a little bit… um… imaginative. However, I also have difficulty in accepting that she encountered my old friend Kaiyutaulliaund and somehow convinced him to sacrifice himself for her. Or, more accurately, for the greater good of all Dragonkind. In truth, that is the part that stretches belief past tolerable levels. He never cared one whit for the good of the species.”

  “Well, my lord,” Graayyya said, clearly indignant. “While I cannot personally speak to the veracity of things I did not see, I have never known Kwallindauria to lie. I do not believe she could have made it up.”

  Baalhalllu nodded, though he did not wholly agree. “Oh, I believe she believes the story. But is it true? That is another question altogether.”

  “I’m not sure how anyone could offer you a satisfactory answer if you believe she may have imagined the whole thing.”

  “Or had the memory put there.”

  Graayyya scoffed. “No dragon would do that. I’m not sure any dragon could do that.”

  “Like they would not go to war with Humanity without the approval of the Council? Like they could not erase your memories and turn you almost feral? Like they could not trap the whole of the Ancient Council of Elders in their lairs while laying waste to the Earth?” Baalhalllu asked pointedly.

  “Point taken,” Graayyya said glumly.

  “As to the rest of the story…” Baalhalllu prompted.

  “Well, my lord, as to the rest of the story, I assure you that we were indeed trapped in my lair. My mind was not my own for a rather long time, though how long I cannot say. And I assure you, my lord, the gods did speak to me through Dauria. The multiplicity of voices that issued from her throat could not have been created naturally. And I do not believe she has such a range of vocalization anyway. There’s no way I can convey to you the extreme simultaneous highs and lows in her voice. The combination of sounds was quite disconcerting. In addition, the things she spoke of… she could not have known such things.”

  “Artifice.”

  “With respect, Lord, no. She knew about the war with the Humans. She knew their fates–“

  “A simple look around would have provided her with that information,” Baalhalllu cut her off. Truly, youngling, he added silently. How can you not have realized that? You were always so perceptive and showed such wisdom.

  “Again, Lord, I must respectfully disagree. We had evidence of conflict, certainly. Did I assume it was Sura and his ilk, yes. But did we know that? Certainly not. And she knew details. Details that have proven correct. She could not have known that with only the information we had at hand.”

  Baalhalllu shook his head in disappointment. “None of which negates the possibility that she manipulated you or perhaps even was being manipulated herself. She is exceptionally powerful in the arcane now, much more so than I would have expected. But that does not make her above the influence of other wyrms.”

  Graayyya sighed. “She has no knowledge of anything she said during that time, my lord. I questioned her extensively. She could not have hidden it from me.”

  “So you say.”

  “My lord!” the garnet was clearly shocked and not a little insulted.

  “Do you truly believe the rest of her story?” he asked, hoping to move the conversation in another direction.

  “I do, my lord. Consider how long I have known her. You know the story. I’ve never known her to lie, not about anything. And besides, what could she possibly have to gain from telling falsehoods? I see no possible gain in it.”

  “Prestige,” Baalhalllu said softly.

  “Do you truly believe she cares for such things?” Graayyya asked incredulously.

  “I do not know,” Baalhalllu said truthfully. “It has been many centuries since I’ve spoken with her. It is true that she once showed great promise and surprising wisdom for her age, but it’s unlikely the youngling I once knew still exists. However, the larger point, as I said before, is she may not know she is deceiving anyone. She may believe everything she has been saying.”

  “That is a fair point, Lord,” Graayyya said slowly. “But I do not believe her mind could have been compromised in such a way. Considering what happened to me, I find it likely that they tried and failed to manipulate her mind. And as to the other, I can tell you with complete certainty that Kwallindauria is still very much who she was before The Sleep. She devoted her every thought to getting to the Council to address us, to change our minds if necessary, before we could make the wrong decision and rain destruction down on the Earth. Which, from what I understand, is exactly what we did.”

  “Not… exactly,” Baalhalllu said, raising an open claw to ward off the garnet’s tirade.

  “Oh?” she asked, brow ridges raised.

  “I assumed you had heard the tale already, else I would have told you before now.”

  “I only know the bits and pieces that I heard from the gods through Dauria’s mouth. We have only been back for a short time.”

  “I see. Well, curl up and listen. Parts of it, by necessity, I can provide only hearsay. I did not awaken until after the fighting had begun.”

  Graayyya nodded as she walked a wide circle around the vast, gray stone cavern before she stopped at a wide, towering stalagmite and coiled herself around it, head resting on her wings to look up at him while he spoke.

  “Unlike you and my dear daughter, I took no pains to ensure anyone knew where I was. I left no orders to be wakened and left no record of where my secret lair was located. Before you berate me for this, my reasons were simple. The fewer people who knew my location, the less danger I would be in. Even then, I did not wholly trust The Watchers to do as commanded. Also, I was not willing to risk the chances of a human uprising somehow finding the record of where I was. So I trusted in my own ability to wake if something unforeseen happened.”

  “How?”

  “Now, now, try not to look so shocked. I know that wasn’t supposed to be possible. As I intended, any full-scale attack or other major violation would break the compact, allowing all of us to wake naturally.”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “All of us?” she asked, her brow ridges raised.

  “Well, most of us, at least.”

  She continued staring, her expression hard.

  He sighed in resignation. “Yes, a few still have not emerged from hibernation. I can only surmise that some sleep harder than others and will awaken in time. The other possibility doesn’t bear thinking on.”

  She nodded, a glimmer of crimson in her golden eyes. “In time,” she said glumly.

  He shrugged his wings. “Unfortunately, there is no other choice. Since the Watchers are all either vanished or destroyed, there is no way for us to go and find them. Those who can rise and rejoin us will do so, and those who cannot will be missed.”

  Graayyya shook her head. “Clearly, your plan to awaken on your own did not work out.”

  Baalhalllu struggled not to growl deep in his chest. “Oh, it did. Just not in the expected time.”

  The garnet’s lips twisted the way they did when she was about to say something sarcastic. “Naturally. Why would anything work out as planned?”

  In spite of himself, he had to force down a chuckle. Keeping his tone serious, he said, “Naturally. All plans go awry, it seems.”

  “So The Watchers could not find you?” she asked.

  “Well,” Baalhalllu said, “I suspect that even had I not been hidden from them, The Watchers would not have come to me. I would not have been so easy to deal with as the younger generation, and I suspect the only reason they woke Dauria was because they did not realize or expect, until they were already committed, that she would have grown so large and so powerful during The Sleep. I can only surmise that she, much like yourself, must have been very close to consciousness for much, if not all, of her years of slumber.”

  The garnet shrugged and tilted her head, as though to say she had surmised as much.

  “I also suspect the reason I was to be left alone was that even before The Sleep, I was among the most ancient and powerful of the wyrms. And of course, none could have mistaken me for a dragon willing to countenance the course events have taken.”

  Graayyya nodded.

  “So I woke on my own. Between interrogations and extrapolations, here is what I have put together. The Watchers have been at this for a long time. The plotting seems to go back centuries, long before Humankind did anything that might have warranted such action. Around the time that the weapons the Humans call Firearms grew to common use is when it began, as near as I can tell. Perhaps it was incredible insight on their part, extrapolating that the flintlock muskets would lead to ever-larger and more destructive weapons, but I personally find that unlikely.”

  “They spent centuries selectively waking only those Watchers they were certain would join their cause, and leaving the others to their slumber. Rather than the original plan of only two at a time, they woke more and more each century as they expanded their plans.”

  “Finally, a few centuries ago, they deemed themselves ready and began trapping those they saw as threats within their lairs. Which, eventually, brings us to you and Kwallindauria. When they failed to trap my daughter, presumably due to the strength of the arcane protections on her lair, they tried to keep her from reaching you in various ways. As a last resort, they arranged for you to kill her and trapped you in your lair. Two birds with one stone, as it were.”

  “While I can’t condone their goal, I do have to admit to a certain admiration for the deep planning that went into this. It was a rather brilliant stroke on their part. I can’t say I would have expected the two of you to overcome what was already in front of you. However, even going farther than I would have, they still underestimated your devotion to one another.”

  “Moving on, however. Once yourselves and a number of others were safely out of the way, they sprang their centuries-long plot. Every wyrm they thought might help them, either by choice or by force, was wakened and they enacted simultaneous, concerted attacks on every major population center and every military base in the world.”

  “This coming to fruition of all their planning was a thing of beauty, so I’m told. The attack went off like clockwork with not a single hitch in the whole attack.”

  “They won that easily?” Graayyyavalllia asked through clenched teeth.

  “Except for one little thing,” Baalhalllu said. “They underestimated the very instinct, which humans have in abundance, that allowed Humankind to rise above Neanderthal man and drove them to become the dominant form of life on Earth. Their survival instinct and tenacious ingenuity were the very factors that almost became the downfall of all the Watchers’ centuries of planning.”

  “What was meant to be a single, devastating strike to enslave or kill every last one of them quickly became guerrilla warfare. The surviving humans disappeared. Every time we thought we knew where they were, they vanished again. Every time we had them cornered, another group would attack our forces from behind and effect an escape.”

  Graayyya smiled appreciatively.

  “I woke in the middle of the extended war. Naturally, until I realized what had actually happened, I joined the battles under the assumption that the Humans had found us and initiated a massive onslaught.”

  The garnet made a face.

  “Yes, Graayyyavalllia, in hindsight I realize how preposterous that sounds. But at the time, it sounded reasonable.”

  “The Humans never got us with the same trick twice, but to be fair, they never tried to. Their tactics grew ever-more complex and ever-more imaginative as time went on. Those in command believed, and rightly so, many wyrms thought, the answer was simple: we just had to wait for the brilliant tactician who led them to die, then it would be easy pickings.”

  “Unfortunately, that didn’t work. We never did learn who led them, but around the time the second century of the war came to a middle, we realized the answer wouldn’t be so simple.”

  “It was then, finally, that we started putting our minds to improving our own tactics and pre-emptively acting in unexpected ways instead of using the same brute-force attacks we used before The Sleep and waiting to react to whatever brilliant new tactic the Humans came up with after the fact.”

  Graayyya nodded and smiled knowingly.

  “That was the turn of the tide. From that point forward, our losses shrank further and further until they creeped almost to a halt. Within a decade, all of Humanity had been either rounded up or destroyed.”

  “And it wasn’t until after the battles ended that you learned the truth about the war?”

  “Correct.”

  “You were the primary mind in charge of our tactics, weren’t you?”

  Baalhalllu smiled, pleased in spite of himself. “How did you guess?”

  “I didn’t. It’s obvious that it would have to be you.”

  Baalhalllu chuckled.

  “So when will we be releasing the human captives?” Graayyya asked.

  Baalhalllu’s lips twisted into a grimace and he cursed himself silently. “I’m afraid–“ he began slowly.

  “You can’t be serious?!” Kwallindauria shouted, stomping her way into the cavern.

  Oh, dear, he thought. “My dear Kwall–“ he began before she cut him off.

  “Don’t start, Sire. I know you intentionally kept me ignorant of this little meeting you’re having. And I suspect this is precisely why. You aren’t seriously saying the Humans are going to remain captives, are you? Tell me that’s not what you’re saying right now!”

  “Dauria,” Baalhalllu said, holding his foreclaws up. “You must understand–“

  “No, Sire, what I understand is you’re allowing humans to remain in captivity. What I understand is you’re condoning their enslavement. What I understand, is you aren’t doing a single blasted thing to free them!”

  “Dauria, I can’t,” he said simply.

  “Can’t?” Graayyya and Dauria said together.

  “It is not within my power,” Baalhalllu said slowly in a quiet voice. “Not any longer,” he added in a whisper.

  “Sire,” Dauria said, voice suddenly gentle. “What happened?”

  “Not only am I no longer at the head of the Council of Elders, but I was voted off it altogether. I have no voice in the future of Dragonkind any longer.”

  “No,” Dauria whispered.

  “Who is in charge?” Graayyya asked.

  Such a perceptive youngling, he thought, then said miserably, “It is Vordillainsura.”

  “By the tears of the Astral Dragon,” Graayyya said.

  At almost the same instant, Dauria breathed, “By the Heart-Bond of my first ancestor.”

  “Agreed,” Baalhalllu said. “On both counts.”

  “What do we do?” Graayyya asked.

  “He hates us all,” Dauria added.

  As ever, Baalhalllu thought. It is as though the two are a single mind speaking from two mouths. Aloud, he said, “For now, the best we can do is keep our heads down and try not to attract his, or any of the new Elders’ attention.” He emphasized the title with disgust.

  Graayyya nodded sagely, but Dauria clenched her jaw and glared. “Tell me, Sire, you have a better plan than that!”

  “I do,” he said. “But now is not the time. We must appear to agree with the New Order. We must not make waves. We must be unextraordinary in every way until the time arrives that we can strike back and reclaim our lost heritage. Can we at least agree on that?” he asked, voice pleading.

  “For now, Sire,” Dauria said.

  “Of course, my lord,” Graayyya said. “If we show our true colors too soon, then all will be for naught anyway.”

  Baalhalllu nodded. “Thank you.”

  The two females nodded as well.

  “Now, as much as I would love to continue this reunion, I think it would be best if we are not seen together for a while. It might remind those in charge of old alliances before we are ready for them to make such a connection.”

  Dauria scowled, but Graayyya nodded understanding.

  He offered a sad smile. “Although everyone knows you two are all-but-inseparable, it might be best to allow the bulk of them to believe that a family schism separates me from the two of you.”

  Dauria nodded and breathed a deep sigh.

  “I will be working behind the curtain to garner as much support for us as I can,” Graayyya said.

  Baalhalllu’s smile warmed a degree. “Good girl. We’ll need all the help we can get. The cards seem to be stacked against us in this.”

  “Until the revolution, then,” Dauria said.

  The two females nodded to him, then stood and strode from his cavern with new purpose.

  I do hope they don’t try anything foolish before we are ready, Baalhalllu thought.

  Curios.