Page 115 of Gate of Chaos


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My magic quivered with the sharp ache of memories crushed into it. My mind hurt for the ruby drake and her memoirs, and the facts of the horrible first few centuries of Lemuria. Then the trauma of your beloved humans—who you know you abandoned—now revered you as gods.

Hekon said, quietly, “Homeworld falling would have destroyed us.”

Mayriel finally spoke. “Worse. The Usurper Queen may have ultimately prevailed. I believe Hekon is right. I can’t sense the past, but I can sense the order of things, and when I hear the truth of what happened, it crystalizes my understanding of our current order. It is like solving part of an equation. I believe Hekon is correct.”

“The end result being Homeworld has fallen.”

I had to glance to see who was speaking. The soft, slightly rough voice belonged to Wyrm Assal, who spoke even less than Mahon was inclined to speak. The Wyrm, who had feathery hair of white and shades of pale green interspersed with specks of dark brown, sat with his consort, a soft citrine-colored Air dragon who I had never even been introduced to, much less heard speak.

Assal spoke again. “We can discuss history, or we can accept the present. Homeworld fell. There is no rescue from Earth. There is no returning to Homeworld. We understood this was a possibility, and we have planned for it.”

Dekka shifted forward on her divan, coiling her legs to the side and brushing the soles of her feet against Mahon’s thighs as she did so. “Precisely, Assal. Helena could not have possibly changedthisoutcome. She has caused no more disruption to Lemuria than a pup causes to their parents.”

“She’s gotten into quite a bit of antics, Dekka. The K’Dol portal closing being one of them,” Mayriel said.

“And what impact has any of it had on the majority of Lemuria? Her most significant impact to our order was devising the gills to supplement our O2. Her greatest impact on Lemuria is gossip fodder. Why has nothing changed?”

“Because she is intended for later,” Assal said. “She is intended for rebuilding.”

Sorren snorted. “A forge-breaker Chaos dragon is meant torebuild?”

“She rebuilt that Gate,” Akoni told his father.

Assal shifted to the edge of his seat. “Even if Homeworldisinhabitable, we have no idea who the enemy is, if they’ve left, if they’ve subjugated the remaining population. We have no idea what we’re walking into.”

“You didn’t seem to mind the idea of that when the plan was to risk everything calling for them to send a ship,” I snapped.

Hekon rolled his neck towards Assal. “You’re picking and choosing Assal.”

“Or we can turn our attention to Earth,” Assal said.

“So you want to rebuildEarthafter you tell the Usurper Queen’s memoryhold my beer, but you don’t want to rebuild Homeworld?” I asked.

“No one mentioned the Usurper Queen,” Lemuel said.

“No one needs to,” Dekka said dryly.

Akoni rolled to his feet. I reached for him in question, he gave me a faint smile and joined Keon in the center of the floor. For the first time since I’d known him, Akoni had worn a formal shendyt, and it wasn’t even lime green, but a deep purple that made his bronze-green skin deeper and more intense.

Akoni spoke mostly to his father. “I have little love for humanity, but I have had a chance to live among them for a short time, and I have developed considerably more compassion for them as a species. The Usurper Queen had to be stopped, but she was not a megalomaniac. She was twisted by grief, rage, and hatred, not ambition or delusions of grandeur.Wehave also decided to pull humanity’s teeth, sacrifice billions, and leave a civilization shattered to make room for our own. Not even Helena disagrees with our reasons for doing it, butnow,” he turned to look at Assal, “we will do it because we cannot be bothered to investigate rebuilding our own home planet. Damage to human civilization hasalwaysbeen the option of last resort.”

Assal moved to bite Akoni’s head off, but Petrarchyan interceded. “He has a point.”

Mayriel took a deep breath. “Our window of unquestioned technological superiority over humanity is closing rapidly. Analysis of any sort of construction or terraforming efforts will take far longer than we have.”

Akoni managed to not give her his usualI’m speaking with a willful idiotattitude. “That wouldn’t be the objective. The objective would be to determine if any cities or infrastructure survived or exist, any obvious signs the planet is still inhabited by or has recently been visited by sentient life, and if there are any immediate and obvious health hazards like toxicity and radiation.”

“To what end?”

Akoni’s effort to remain diplomatic reached Herculean proportions. “To rebuild it. Humanity is distracted by Maren’s corpse.”

“Cyberattack activity has increased on account of Maren’s corpse,” Hekon corrected. “If they continue to harden their infrastructures, it will make our plan much more difficult. Maren’s corpse is ofgreatinterest, and no one wants to be the last to know of a potential commercial or military use.”

“But the humans aren’t looking over their shoulders. No one but the very religious believe she’s anything except an animal. The shock value isdragons are real, but Maren is otherwise a biological specimen to be cataloged, examined, and, if possible, exploited for profit. There’s nothing preventingyoufrom acting if you believe the window is about to close.”

“Only the Seat.”

“Then surely we are capable of multitasking.”

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