Chiana explains...

Rosepaw

"Ah, a very worthy friend of my son," he begins without preamble. "I approve."

"I'm so very happy you do!" Chiana says, almost sounding annoyed after looking up at the ebony gryphon and then giving an odd twitch. "Uh... I mean.... heh." If I didn't know better, I'd swear that there could be some avian heritage in that girl....

Chiana

I gather myself before continuing. Of all the types you do NOT want angry at you are royals in power. Well, at least not without a quick escape route and a ship off planet...

Know that from personal experience back in the Uncharted. That said though, by the way I figure it, this male gryphon and his mates would be not so . . . touchy as some I'd encountered in the past in the UT. Might as well go with it. The Doctor hadn't told much about his adopted parents (having been too busy back on the Defiant with both Rygels making life difficult), but enough had been said to tell me that they were good sorts.

Makes me wonder why they insisted coming here to examine me. Kept feeling those eyes of theirs on my back even while I was laughing and joking with the other wives.

"Look," I sigh. "I'm kinda new to this magic stuff. New to being a dragon and all that. Hey, I know . . . Sigin had told me about how there had been this . . .BIG misunderstanding between gryphons and dragons back during that Atlantis business...."

"Which Dragonkind had no business doing what it had done to them," Regent Malachi whispered softly, remembering the twisted history lessons taught to her in childhood, glorifying how the ancient dragons had gone out to bolster their own powers in preparation against an Altantian invasion that never came by stealing from (and nearly destroying) the ancient gryphons.

"Which we gryphons still say was divine punishment for our ancestors back then having grown too materialistic and decadent," Evening Song protests, taking her eyes off me and look at the regent. "The Mistress Moon had only influenced things to where dragonkind were a sanctified instrument of her will, back . . . "

"Yeah, all that." I agree, pushing it aside before we get sidetracked here with a religious hot topic. "Even understand how the through a intelligence frellup brought about by an Enemy deception nearly got all of the Dragons of Terra Prime killed before the mistake got caught . . . "

Inquirer and Elrondir had been rather upset with the memory on how the Enemy had planted evidence linking all of the Dragon Kingdom of Terra Prime with the now dead Enemy (or Lizards as the Terrans call them) in some "ghastly" (Sigin's word) plot to wipe all of humanity first on Terra Prime (and not mentioned until now, folks, plans to use this deadly magic/science hybrid disease called the Phage to kill the rest of humanity elsewhere). Well, somewhere along the way.... Frell....

The Enemy's deception had been crafted to divert resources away from their mining and other operations of theirs upon Terra Prime during when the Enemy/Alliance war had touched down here. Instead of concentrating on the real threat, resources got spent on "shutting down" the dangerous Dragon allies. Some loose cannons or some such had taken it upon themselves to return the favor that the Enemy (and their crony, the dragon who'd frelled up so much as to bring Terra Prime's mineral richness in Tiberian to their attention in the frellin' first place with his magic probings).... Well, they thought that since the Dragons were trying to wipe out all of humanity (had already killed 4/5ths with this Phage so far back then on Terra Prime) they were going to return the favor! So they'd gone beyond merely "bombing them back to the Stone Ages" with the hit and run tactics through their cybernetically controlled Avatar units (remember, the Phage was so lethal and dangerous that Military humans going down in person in any form was almost sure suicide) . . . . they went about "dragon hunting". For the first time ever, Dragons learned to "beware of the human" in that they nearly got driven to extinction.

1. Quiet a few heads rolled (figuratively) for that afterwards, but the Captain of that Military ship got exonerated of any charges of genocide, especially after the remaining Dragons FORCED the issue...

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