Down in the lower vaults…..
”You are kidding me, right?” Black Astra says, staring at the Golem/AI
woman with a blue sapphire in her forehead . “There’s actually a GAME about
magicians and sword swinging fighters back where you’re from? And it’s…popular?”
”Yep,” chuckles Inquirer as she cleans the last of her issued side arms.
“I always loved to play a female magic user called Sylvia Shardstar, human
mage/fighter. I even had a similar outfit that I rezed up online with other
online users….though I preferred the old style pencil and paper adventure……Though
being the REAL thing now….is more than a little exciting…..”
She looked forward to her next magic lessons with the other mages…once
they recovered enough.
”Pencil and paper adventures?” Fred 4 asks, puzzled.
Inquirer mentally sighed as she explained what the electronic version
of “role playing” was and how it compared (and what it was compared) to
the traditional version of role playing back in the late 20th century.
”I find it more than….bizarre that a regular person would fantasize
about doing what I did for a living,” Fred 4 says, fox ears twitching.
“I mean, it’s better than planting crops and tending livestock….like a
serf or peasant, but it’s hard all the same….and dangerous!”
”Aye!” agreed Astra 3 and 4 together.
”I only fought Dragon Vellus because he had ambushed the royal convey
I was traveling with,” Astra 3 continued. “And my sword….just bounced off
his thick hide!”
”I was lucky in the fact that I skewered him while he was in dog form,”
Fred 3 put in. “Dragons take on the vulnerabilities of the forms they choose.
That’s how Synizn and his brothers were effected by lycanthropy, and how
I was able to kill Vellus.”
”Do you think that there ever really was a teenage boy named Vellus
that had been turned into a dog?” Fred 4 asks in a joking voice.
The others laugh, until Inquirer says quietly.
”There had been,” she said. “Probe saw his stuffed body in the lair
of this world’s Minestus right before he and the Others found their way
to Atlantis…..”
Human and demifox eyes grow large at that, and the room is silent for
a bit.
”Ack, by the gods….it would be just like that monster…..” Fred 5 mutters,
shivering despite himself.
After a bit, Black Astra sighs….
”After meeting the other Synizns….I understand now why Malachi had sent
us to see our world’s version of him,” she says sadly. “Not only was she
helping us….she was trying to help him, also. I wonder….what happened to
the dragon bodies after we had left……”
”Probably that version’s of me’s Dragon Circle had come and cremated
her body.” Synizn says, catching the last of the conversation as he came
into the area, having just returned from his talk with Malachi Dronocis.
“Granted, it might have taken like two weeks or more for the….well….news
to prevail upon us, but it would have…eventually. That….or they were in
the process of hunting down any mages foolish enough to try to use the
head and inner organs of her corpse for spells……”
”Malachi’s Dragon Circle and not Minestus’ Circle?” Inquirer asks, curious.
”Minestus group also….” The demifox conceded. “In fact, both circles
would unite in this one task to track down any magic user foolish enough
to desecrate a elder dragon, a Wyrm, so. If the mage had done the killing,
then it would have been…. okay…. honorable even. Something like….well,
the spoils of battle, but to scavenge a wyrm’s body is just asking…..for
trouble.”
-
 Just
then Probe’s base unit, his seat of consciousness, called out to her…..
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