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“That sounds like a really, really bad game of cosmic roulette,” I said.
Auryn ran his finger across his lips. “I agree. So how was it used?”
“Chaos dragons were used to achieve rare permutations in scientific experiments. Looking for that one in abillionoutcome. It was how the chorus drive was discovered. A team of scientists who were confident in their theory, but couldn’t get the result. A Chaos dragon was used to introduce sufficient entropy into the system to generate the extreme outlier result that ultimately proved the theory, and the drives were reverse engineered from there. A Chaos dragon was seen as a way to engineer a miracle. As long as you were willing to engineer a catastrophe. Luck charm or very strange muse or perhaps a bit of both.”
Silence will be no sanctuary for you, little creature.
Keon’s smile disappeared. “Homeworld believed—or had discovered, it’s unclear how scientifically the Chaos Affinity was actually studied—that every Chaos dragon existed for a specific purpose, and every Chaos dragon was the result of entropic collision, and that the impact of a Chaos dragon appearing would echo through the cosmic web. And that this purpose could ultimately only betrulyunderstood in hindsight. But some clues could be gleaned based on the dragon’s consorts.”
Keon’s fingers tightened. “It sounds as though Homeworld accepted Chaos dragons the way they accepted natural disasters. A peril to be mitigated, but ultimately unavoidable, beneficial, and part of order.”
Akoni glared at Keon. “That is a hell of a conceit. Order and Chaos are two different things. Trying to argue that chaos is just the servant of order is a sad attempt to exert control.”
He said that like I wasn’t already the object of public scrutiny. “Tell me about the type of consorts. And how they indicate what a Chaos dragon’s purpose is. Because so far, it seems likebreak stuffis my purpose.”
“There’s always a Prime Consort. Not Prime because they are thebestconsort, but because there is always a Prime. A general-purpose consort who can step into many roles and serve many purposes. Warrior, defender, politician, diplomat, comfort, artist, and so on. But master of none of those things. The consort that is multi-faceted—the term isnine-sided—so that all the other consorts can find their own reflection in them. Often multi-Affinity.”
“General purpose,” Akoni muttered.
I gave him a playful kick. “How many other types are there?”
“Eight. For nine total variants.”
“Sure. Nine. Why am Inotsurprised.”
Auryn chuckled. Akoni was a little less amused. “Hekon has called Auryn the Distant Star, and you the Mooring. Is he right?”
“He’s right. Hekon actually had a list of all nine, but no descriptions to go with it. He guessed. Good guess. He was also right that the consorts provide an anchor for the Chaos dragon. The consorts become the stars and celestial bodies when the Chaos dragon goes out of reach of the actual stars. There’s a pictograph for that not-place, but I think it’s what you describe as thefirmament.”
“Is there a name for it?” I asked.
“We haven’t found a proper name for it. It uses an antiquated pictograph that meansnowhere, with a modification that meansnullorvoid. Our first thought was that it was intended to be a double negative, but that would meaneverywhere, and there are already a number of pictographs to indicateeverywhere, and the specificnowherepictograph only appears in the context of Chaos dragons.”
I tapped my fingers together. Like a null value in a database or equation. Null existed because itdidn’texist. It wasn’t zero. Zero was something you could perform math on. You couldn’t perform math on a null value. But you could still perceive null, in the sense you percieved what didn’t exist, if you contemplated the fact it didn’t exist.
I poked my fingertips together. Hmm.
Akoni palmed my ass. “Focus.”
I swatted his hand away.
Keon watched with more interest than usual. Akoni palmed my ass again, slower this time, making eye contact with Keon as he did so.
Auryn chuckled and one ofhishands slid along one of my breasts.
Keon returned the eye contact to my eyes. “The Distant Star is the one the Chaos dragon can always see, even if they get lost. Only a handful have existed over the eons. Aloof, emotional, anddangerouslypowerful. The language used conveys Distant Stars are to be treated with a certain degree of caution, and a Chaos dragon with a Distant Star is not to be trifled with. The combination of a Chaos dragon and a Distant Star is considered a potential singularity.”
“How... comforting,” I said while Auryn remained stoic. “My goal in life isnotto turn into a black hole. Or neutron star. Or nuclear pasta.”
“Except there are three of us,” Akoni said, “which means you two orbit each other all you like, but we still have our own gravity to prevent collapse. Moorings, Stone Drake? Since I am the off-the-shelf Prime.”
Keon grimaced. “The most common type after a Prime. Very few Chaos dragonsdidn’thave a Mooring, and those were magically weak. Moorings are very low-magic, usually a soil or stone Affinity. I am lead shielding. Boron control rods.”
“Which I desperately need,” I told him before he could get salty with himself.
He dug up a smile. “The others are all what you’d expect. Warrior, diplomat, artist, confidant. Always one Prime, but once there was a Chaos dragon with a Prime and three Warriors. Dark time, obviously. The most common combination is Prime, Mooring, then Diplomat or Scholar.”
“Not Warrior,” Auryn said.
