The Consequences of Meeting a Dragon

"That was a lot faster than I expected," Mideis said, standing up and coming over to them. "How did he do?"

Without a word, Ariom handed him the sheet of paper with the magic formation that Thenio had drawn.

Mideis looked down at the paper. "What...?" His eyes widened in surprise. "What is this? It's almost a perfect copy. There are mistakes in a few of the runes, but...." He looked up at Thenio, then at Ariom. "He was just a first year enchanting student, wasn't he? How did he do this?"

Ariom shook his head. "I don't know. I wasn't expecting him to be able to do this well, either." He looked at Thenio. "How did you do it?"

"Um...." Thenio looked around uncertainly. Did the four of them all have to stare at him at once like that...? "Well, I just turned the information Amisi gave me into a picture. And then I drew it on the paper."

The room was silent for a moment.

"Wait...what do you mean?" Mideis had a confused expression. "You turned it into a picture? How?"

"I'm...not sure? I don't think I did anything special. I just...turned it into a picture. In my head. Just like I do when I'm drawing in my sketchbook. I think of what I want to draw and everything I know about that thing. Then I see it as an image, and I use the pencil to capture the image on the paper. That's how drawing works, right?"

"Is it?" Mideis was looking even more confused.

"No, I don't think so," Ariom said, shaking his head again. "You were using magic while you were drawing. It was only a small amount—I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been watching you closely just now—but you were definitely using some. If whatever you were doing is how you normally draw, then no, that's not how it works for most people."

Thenio blinked. "Oh."

"It's not normal to use magic when you draw?" Iggy tilted his head, looking almost as confused as Mideis. "But Thenio uses magic a lot when he draws in his drawing book. So I like to watch him draw, you know? And I like to look at his drawings. Because they smell really nice! Like his magic smells nice, okay? And Ariom uses magic when he draws. So it's normal, right?"

"Is that why you never said anything about Thenio doing it...?" Ariom looked slightly exasperated. "No, it's not normal. I only use magic when I'm scribing. Or when I'm analyzing an enchantment and taking notes. Not when I'm just drawing normally."

"Oh." Iggy straightened his head. Then he tilted it again in the other direction. "The kind of drawing you do is different from the drawing that Thenio does?"

"It should be." Ariom was looking at Thenio with his brow slightly furrowed. "But maybe it's not as different as I thought it was...."

Mideis also frowned. "If he's using magic when he draws...and can turn information into an image in his head...and we think he might be able to use some kind of mental magic...hmm...."

He looked at Amisi. She had been watching Thenio, but she turned and met Mideis' gaze. The two of them stared at each other silently. They were presumably communicating via telepathy, because after a minute or two, they both nodded in unison, as though they'd just discussed something and come to a conclusion.

"He might be using some form of clairvoyance," Mideis said, turning to Ariom. "I told you it was common for children with mental affinities to use magic without being aware of it, right? And clairvoyance involves perceiving information through imagery. I've never seen it work quite like this before, but...well, there aren't that many humans who can use it in the first place. Most of us are limited to telepathy and empathy. So it's hard to know exactly how it can or can't manifest. And he's not exactly your typical mental magic user anyway."

Thenio stared at Mideis in disbelief. Using clairvoyance? Him? People kept telling him that his chaos affinity meant he had the potential to use all kinds of different magic, but how was something like that coming up right off the bat?

Besides, Eteon was the one who had taught him how to draw, wasn't he? He'd been the one who told Thenio about turning knowledge into images. And he wasn't....

...was he?

Thenio bit his lip and looked down at the floorboards. He wasn't sure he liked where this train of thought was heading....

It was true that he didn't actually know what kind of magic Eteon used, so it was entirely possible that he had a mental affinity. That could explain why he didn't want to reveal his abilities. Mental mages were quite rare, and they were highly valued in the magic community. But many people were suspicious of them, since they could manipulate others so easily.

Wait...hadn't Mideis just said that most humans couldn't use clairvoyance? So if Eteon really could use it, too....

What did that mean? Did it mean anything? Was it just a coincidence?

Somehow Thenio had a feeling that it wasn't....

"I can't use clairvoyance myself," Mideis was saying. "But Amisi can, although she can't control it perfectly. She sometimes has images pop into her head that tell her things, like the emotional state of a person she meets or the history of an item she touches. It's some kind of symbolic image, usually. Like you might see in a dream.

"Wild tauas use clairvoyance to help them find food or avoid danger. But since Amisi has lived around humans most of her life, her abilities have developed a little differently. It might be the same for you—your mental magic is oriented toward drawing pictures just because that's what you've used it for the most."

"When do you think you started doing it?" Ariom asked. "Has drawing always been that way for you?"

"Well...no, not at first." Thenio hesitated, not sure how much he ought to say. He didn't want to bring up Eteon if he didn't have to. "Um...I started learning to draw when I was really young, so obviously I wasn't very good at first. I was mainly interested in drawing animals at the time, so I started reading as many books about animals as I could. At first it was mostly to look at the pictures, to figure out how the animals were shaped. And that helped a lot.

"But sometime later, I noticed that books without pictures helped me draw better, too. I even had a couple of times when I read about some kind of animal or magic beast and was able to draw it correctly, even without seeing a picture. At the time, I thought I must have seen a picture somewhere else and just forgotten. But maybe...." He trailed off, uncertainly.

Mideis nodded. "Yes, it's possible that you were already using clairvoyance by that point, so you were able to see what that animal looked like, even without looking at a picture. Like I said, it's an unusual way to use mental magic. But as a child, if you really wanted to know what a particular animal looked like so you could draw it...well, I could see how your magic might have activated without you realizing it to allow you to see the animal you were thinking about. Mental magic is notoriously difficult to teach, so most of us have to sort of stumble our way into learning how to use it, especially in the beginning."

"So you think it developed naturally? I guess that would make sense for a mental mage...but...I wonder...." Ariom regarded Thenio thoughtfully for a moment. "Didn't you say that Eteon was the one who taught you how to draw?"

It had come up after all....

"Um...yeah. He did."

"And what about this turning information into pictures thing? Did he teach you about that?"

"That...no. Not exactly." Thenio shifted uncomfortably in his chair and looked down at the floor again. "I mean, he told me that studying animals would help me draw them better, but he never said.... It was...kind of different...."

There was an awkward silence.

"Thenio," Ariom said quietly. "You don't need to protect him. Even if he knows something about this clairvoyance or whatever it is you've been using, we're not going to do anything to him because of it." His expression grew very serious. "He's not someone we can touch, even if we wanted to."

Thenio raised his head, surprised. What did Ariom mean by that...?

"Wait. Who's Eteon?" Mideis asked, looking back and forth between the two of them with a puzzled expression.

"He's Thenio's friend!" Iggy piped up. "He sits in the park and makes wooden toys. He makes really good toys, okay? He made my flying chicken! And Humerus' puppet! And a cockatrice that looks like Alula wearing feathers!"

"Uh...that doesn't really help...."

Ariom sighed. "He's an elderly woodcarver that Thenio has known since he was a young child. And he's an uncertified magician who seems to have some pretty incredible magic skills...but also seems to spend most of his free time selling wooden toys in the park near Thenio's house for some inexplicable reason. And...."

He paused, looking over at Thenio with a slightly conflicted expression, as if deciding how much he wanted to say.

Then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and continued in a resigned voice, "And...he's probably a mythic beast's agent."

Thenio's eyes went wide.

"A mythic agent is hanging out in a park selling toys? Are you being serious?" Mideis was staring at Ariom like he'd just sprouted an extra pair of ears. "Why would he do that?"

"What's a mythic beast agent?" Iggy asked curiously.

"It's a person who's made a contract with a mythic beast," Ariom explained. "They do what the mythic beast asks them to in exchange for the mythic giving them some extra magic abilities. It's a little bit like a familiar contract. The exact terms can vary a lot...like how your contract is different from Humerus'. Right?"

"Mmm. Right. Humerus' contract has a part that doesn't let him attack people." Iggy nodded. "But I can attack people if I want to!" he added brightly, waving his tail a little.

"You can. But please don't," Ariom told him firmly. Then he turned back to Mideis. "I don't know why he's selling wooden toys. When I asked him, he said it was just because he was bored. He said he likes going to the park in order to interact with people. And maybe that's true. But it's probably not the whole story." He glanced at Thenio. "The fact that the particular park he chose to set up shop in just happens to be a couple of blocks away from a certain chaos morph's home...I doubt that's a coincidence."

Mideis raised his eyebrows. "Are you saying there's a mythic beast that's interested in Thenio's chaos magic?"

Ariom shrugged. "Possibly. It might just be Eteon himself who's interested in him. But if he's been spending that much time watching over Thenio, the mythic he's contracted with doesn't have a problem with it, at the very least. I don't think either of them have any ill-intentions toward Thenio, though. Eteon seems to legitimately care about him."

Thenio was staring blankly ahead of him, listening to what Ariom was saying but not quite comprehending it.

A mythic beast's agent? Eteon? No...he couldn't be....

He couldn't....

...yes...he could.

Even though Thenio's first impulse was to deny it, a small voice in the back of his mind told him that it actually made a lot of sense.

Who was it that had given him a carving of a dream beast? Eteon. If the dream beast actually was a real, live mythic beast, then there was obviously some connection between the two of them.

Eteon being the dream beast's agent would even explain the unusual clairvoyant ability. What was it that Mideis had said about Amisi's clairvoyance just now?

It's some kind of symbolic image, usually. Like you might see in a dream.

Turning information into an image...wasn't that what dreams were? Then if something like 'dream magic' actually existed, wouldn't it make sense for it to include an ability like that? And it would also make sense for Eteon, as the dream beast's agent, to be able to use that ability.

But...why could Thenio do it, too...?

Was it because of his chaos magic's ability to turn into other magic types? Was that why the dream beast was interested in him...because he had the potential to use the same kind of magic that it did? Was it even possible for human magic to mimic a magic beast's...?

As Thenio sank deeper into the sea of questions, a dark brown shape suddenly landed in his lap, making him jump and look down. Amisi's light orange eyes looked back at him. She stood up on her hind legs and put her front paws on his shoulder.

"You don't need to worry by yourself. There are lots of us around to help you. Right?" she said, patting his cheek lightly with her paw.

"Ah...sorry, Thenio." Mideis gave him an apologetic smile. "Ariom and I both tend to get carried away whenever we run across an interesting magic topic. We weren't being very considerate of how this conversation must be making you feel. Did you know anything about your friend's possible connection to a mythic beast?"

Thenio shook his head. "I didn't even know he could use magic until a few weeks ago. There are quite a few older people in our neighborhood who like to sit in the park and visit with other people. I always thought he was just another one of them. The only difference was that he was really good at carving wood. Well...and the fact that he seemed to like me. Most of the others didn't...."

"Ariom told me about the effect your magic has on people with lower magic power levels," Mideis said gently. "He wondered if that could be a kind of mental magic. I don't think so, though I'm not sure exactly what else it could be.... Whatever it is, though, I'm sure it must have made things difficult for you growing up. If this Eteon wasn't affected by it, that must have made him a very precious person to you."

Thenio bit his lip and nodded.

"Then it probably hurts to find out that he's been keeping secrets from you, doesn't it? Try not to take it too hard, though. I have to do undercover work for the Royal Guard once in a while, you know? Hiding your identity from people doesn't necessarily mean they did anything wrong or that you wish them harm. Sometimes you have to do it to protect people. To keep them from getting caught up in whatever trouble is going on.

"Most mythic agents hide their identities, and it's probably for the same kind of reasons. Think about it—what happens if people find out that a young boy has a connection to a mythic beast? A lot of people would try to take advantage of that, wouldn't they? Your friend Eteon may have been keeping secrets from you in order to protect you."

"Didn't he say something like that?" Ariom asked, looking thoughtful. "The first time we went to the park with you. He said he hadn't told you that he could use magic because he didn't want you to get caught up in his problems."

"Oh. I guess he did...."

They all fell silent for a moment.

Amisi took her paws off Thenio's shoulder and settled down on his lap. He lifted his hand and started stroking her velvety brown fur.

Mideis looked at Ariom with a slight frown. "Come to think of it, how do you even know about this Eteon being a mythic beast agent, if he hasn't actually told anyone?"

"It was my uncle's speculation, actually. His revenant has very good instincts about people—almost as good as Amisi's. He could sense that Eteon was a lot more powerful than he was letting on. Uncle Bero mentioned it to General Obarin, and he contacted a mythic agent that he knows to ask about Eteon." Ariom glanced at Thenio. "Not that we had any real reason to be suspicious of him, mind. The general just wanted to make sure he wasn't anyone that we needed to worry about. I mean, a powerful magician hiding his abilities and hanging around a park in a mostly non-magic neighborhood...it is a little strange, you have to admit."

"So that other agent confirmed it?" Mideis asked.

Ariom frowned and shook his head. "Actually...no. Not entirely. The exact message that my uncle passed on to me was, 'You don't need to worry about him. Please treat him courteously, and don't interfere with him.'"

"'Please treat him courteously'?" Mideis repeated. "And that's coming from a mythic agent?"

"No...that wasn't from the agent," Ariom said slowly. "That was the message the agent's contracted mythic beast gave to the agent when he asked. Apparently the agent himself doesn't even know exactly who Eteon is. He just knows that he's someone he should be polite to...."

"Someone a mythic beast agent needs to be polite to?" Mideis looked taken aback. "Scary.... Does that mean he's the agent of a higher-ranking mythic beast?"

"Probably. That's the most logical interpretation."

"Well, it's either that or he's a low-ranking mythic beast himself." Mideis gave an awkward laugh. "No offense, Thenio, but I have a hard time believing that your chaos magic is so important that an actual mythic beast has been sitting around selling toys in a park just so he can keep an eye on you. Even a mythic agent doing it is crazy enough...."

Thenio made a face and didn't reply.

He'd been debating whether or not he ought to tell them about the dream beast, and that last comment was enough to convince him not to. Not yet, anyway.

He didn't blame Mideis for being skeptical that a mythic beast would be keeping an eye on him, of course. He still didn't entirely believe it himself. And that was even with knowing that the dream beast had a much better method of watching him than sitting in a park....

Wait. The last time he'd seen the beast, hadn't it said something about having to be careful about using its power around him? That could explain why it would send an agent to watch him instead of doing it directly.

But then...why had it started showing up in his dreams the past couple of months?

Thenio frowned a little as he looked down at Amisi, who had closed her eyes and was purring loudly in response to the neck massage he was currently giving her. She'd told him not to worry by himself and let them help, but...when it came to the dream beast, there were still too many things he didn't understand. He wasn't even sure where to start explaining it to anyone else.

And besides...during that last encounter with the beast.... Hadn't it basically been cuddling him because he’d had a bad dream and was frightened?

He really...really...didn’t want to tell anyone about that....

Actually...most of his interactions with the dream beast so far would be pretty embarrassing to talk about, now that he thought about it....

"Well, whoever he really is, he's someone that we shouldn't mess around with," Ariom said, looking at Mideis. "This ability that Thenio has seems like it could be extremely useful for enchantment analysis, but if it's something he learned from Eteon, we'll need to be careful who we let know about it. That's why I decided to tell you all this. And I'm trusting that you have enough sense to show some discretion in who you pass it on to."

"Ah...of course." Mideis nodded. "Even if it's just normal clairvoyance that he's using, it would be better to keep it quiet. A valuable skill like that could easily make him a target if it gets out. Much more so if it's a version of clairvoyance that he learned from a mythic beast's agent. I won't tell anyone aside from the vice-captain. And I'll only need to tell him if Thenio wants to work with us on this analysis job."

They both turned to look at Thenio.

"Do you want to try working on this with us?" Ariom asked him. "If you can repeat what you did just now, I think you might be able to make things a lot easier for us. With some practice, relaying the formation information to you might be just as fast as Mideis drawing it directly. Maybe even faster, once you've studied up on the enchanting style."

"Since Amisi and I will also be involved, we should be able to cover up the fact that you can use mental magic," Mideis added. "We can just say that we've given you some special training to be able to receive and transcribe the enchantment information. Most people don't understand much about how telepathy works, so I doubt anyone will question it. The vice-captain will be able to help us keep it quiet, as well. I know he can seem a little...off-putting, let’s say...but he’s definitely someone you can trust."

"That's.... I mean, I want to help if I can," Thenio said uncertainly. "But I've only done it once, and you said I made some mistakes. I'm not sure if I can really do it well enough...."

"Well, there's only one way to find out," Mideis said with a shrug. "I cleared my schedule for the afternoon, so Amisi and I can stay and test things out with you as long as you want."

"You don't need to feel pressured," Ariom said. "When I was originally making plans for how to conduct this analysis, I didn't even know that having you help out would be an option. So it's all right if it turns out you're not up to it or if you decide you don't want to. But if you want to try it...." He glanced at Mideis. "Well, it's a good opportunity for you to get some training with a couple of mental magic experts, if nothing else."

Thenio hesitated. He didn't really understand this clairvoyant ability that he supposedly had, and he didn't feel that confident. But Ariom had been doing an awful lot for him, and if there was something he could do to repay the favor a little...to actually be useful for once....

Finally, he gave a determined nod. "All right. I want to give it a try."