Part 12
When the three siblings went home for lunch, Karzog was left to guard the sleeping prisoners and listen for violence. He was the logical choice for this duty, since one of the attributes that he possessed that his three companions didn’t was the inherent and legendary patience of his race, and he wouldn’t hunger for another week so he didn’t need lunch. His patience was still limited compared to that of adult dragons, but it more than sufficed in this case.
“So, are you having fun?” Mark chuckled as his children sat down to eat.
“It’s okay, but the real fun begins tonight, when we wake ‘em all up and inform them of their new circumstances.” Helemia laughed.
“I take it you’ve been following our progress, since you didn’t ask how it was going.” Reggie stated around a mouthful of bread and soup. “Any comments?”
“You should’ve worked on the girl with the slashed guts before you Healed the rest of that batch, not last.” Talia stated. “But it’s a minor point, since she wasn’t close to death. Other than that, excellent work.”
“You’ll soon be out of room for prisoners in the backyard valley.” Alilia pointed out. “Where will you move your operations then?”
“Here.” Valentia replied, speaking psionicly since her mouth was too full of salad to talk politely, as she cast an Illusory map of Hiliani over the table, with an island on the north-west edge of the archipelago just to the west of the Sylvan area lit in blue. “It’s defensible, it has a good water supply, and the best ocean fishing in Hiliani is just offshore there, which we’ll need for the food supply. We’ll move them over tonight.”
“We’ll have to work harder to catch ‘em now.” Helemia stated. “They know that they’ve been disappearing and they’ve mostly stopped fighting, but we’re pretty well focused in on their psionics now, so we’ll still be able to find ‘em.”
they were just fighting and wouldn’t have tried to kill each other due to their god’s ban on it, but that wasn’t really obvious when we grabbed ‘em. As soon as we realized it, we put ‘em back and let ‘em wake up, but they sure know something strange happened, so they didn’t keep fighting. It increases the chance that the rest of the adults will figure out what’s going on sooner than we thought they would, but if so, we’ll just have to deal with it,
we’ll still come back for lunch every day, and to sleep, and for time
the Compulsion and the automatic casting of Osbald’s Oath off of it. Then if you reach an agreement with the Sylvan and you want to be able to trust that they’ll stick to what they promised, you can have them swear to it on the stone. They’ll probably want
good thinking, Father.” Reggie nodded as he Summoned the
on the bracelet Povon wears, and they were her suggestion. Kragorram actually made them, but we cast all the spells. And of course the one
impressive, but I can sure feel it tingling on my finger from all the
come up with, they’re self-sizing and practically indestructible, and the diamond’s shape is a single complete natural crystal. We’ve
Povon got us started on that in our first training with Quewanak. She stored all her notes in hers; notes on thousands of personnel on both sides of the conflict, notes on locations and their tactical and strategic properties, everything. And it was all still there for us when we came out of the training. It’s way easier than always casting Readings
rings, myself, though after we tested
the children chorused together, then giggled as they admired
Povon and Kragorram!”
welcome.” came
from the box. “I couldn’t wait to try it on! Mmm, it’s nice too! Thank
chuckled,
we’re off.” Reggie declared as he pushed away from the table. And after a minute of
difficult to find the young Sylvan now, but with a careful combination of tracking, magic,