The Consequences of Meeting a Dragon

Since Iggy had missed lunch, and it looked like the refreshment cart waiting in the reception room might get forgotten, Thenio stopped briefly by the kitchen on their way upstairs to grab some leftover chicken balls from the ice box for him.

These were basically the same as the fish balls from earlier but were made with minced chicken instead of fish. Thenio had made both types at the same time, with the intention of serving the fish for Casturi's visit and the chicken for their next practice session with Amisi.

He was well aware that there were plenty of birds who ate other birds, but serving chicken to a gryphon still seemed a bit wrong somehow....

When they reached the bedroom, Amisi made a beeline for the fireplace and sat in front of it, shivering and looking pitifully up at Thenio.

"All right, I'll turn it on for you. Just give me a second."

He put Iggy and the container of chicken balls down on the table in front of the sofa, taking the lid off the container so that the little dragon could help himself.

The fireplace was magic-operated, as were most of the others in the house. Only the one in the reception room was traditional style. Thenio suspected that Ariom had made one that way on purpose just so Iggy could show off his fire-lighting skills once in a while.

The fireplaces had a control panel on the front, similar to the ones by the front door and on Ariom's archery practice equipment. It controlled the level of the flames and the amount of heat they generated. It could even change the color. Thenio's fireplace also had an extra layer of glass insulation installed over it, ensuring that no magic would leak out into the room from inside.

He tried hard not to think about how much it had all cost....

Thenio started up the fire for Amisi. "There, it should get warm in a minute. I'll go get you a blanket to sit on, okay?"

Amisi nodded. "O-k-kay...t-thanks...." Even her voice was shaking.

The ice magic seemed to have really gotten to her.... Though even Thenio still felt a bit chilled, and he'd only been around Namyis for a couple of minutes. Amisi had been close to her the whole time they were riding over from the Royal Guard headquarters in the carriage.

Thenio went to the next room and got out a spare blanket. He also got the water bowl that he kept in the bathroom for Iggy and refilled it with fresh water before taking it out and setting it on the table next to the container of chicken balls.

Iggy had still been a bit riled up when Thenio had put him down, but the sight of the chicken had pacified him almost immediately. He was now sitting on his haunches next to the container, holding a half-eaten chicken ball in his front paws and munching away happily. There were already bits of chicken all over his face. Thenio made a mental note to go back to the bathroom for a cleaning cloth before turning to arrange the blanket in front of the fireplace for Amisi.

He used most of the blanket to form a small nest, reserving one corner to be folded over the top once Amisi was inside. It was an arrangement that Butterfly had always loved to sleep in when the weather was cold.

"Here you go," he told Amisi, holding up the top layer of the little cocoon for her. "Get in, and then I'll cover you up. It should be nice and cozy in there."

She happily climbed into the blanket nest, circled around a couple of times, and then curled herself into a tight ball in the center. Thenio laid the corner of the blanket down lightly over top of her.

"You can come out and have some snacks after you get warmed up, all right?" he said, giving the lump under the blanket a little pat. "I'll tell Iggy to leave some chicken for you."

"Okay," Amisi's muffled voice said from inside the blanket.

Once the familiars were settled, Thenio got his sketchbook and sat down on the sofa. If they had to stay in here until Ariom fixed Namyis' magic dampening device, it would probably take a while. Studying his magic theory book might be a better way to spend that time, but Thenio was still feeling a little unsettled from what had happened downstairs...partly because he didn't really know what had happened. Iggy and Ariom had both acted like it was something serious, but Thenio hadn't felt anything, apart from being a little cold.

Well, he'd probably get an explanation from Ariom eventually. For now, it was probably fine to spend a few minutes drawing and calming down. He could switch to studying later.

Like he often did, Thenio drew sketches of the thing that he wanted to think about—Ice Queen, in this case. After talking to Eteon and learning about dream magic, it had occurred to him that maybe it was the reason he could figure things out better when he drew pictures of them.

Hadn't Eteon said that dream magic could pull information from the world? They'd talked about using information to draw pictures...but could it also work the other way around? Could drawing pictures also give him information? Was that why he'd always felt like drawing helped him think through and understand things?

Maybe not.... Even if he could copy some of Eteon's dream magic techniques, doing something that amazing felt a little far fetched. And he'd heard other people say that things like drawing or writing or building something helped them focus and think clearly. It was probably just a normal thing.

Either way, he decided to draw some sketches of Namyis while he thought about what had happened earlier. He drew her getting out of the carriage and the gentle smile she'd given him when Mideis had introduced them.

He'd been practicing drawing with and without magic the past few days, since Mideis thought that learning to be aware of when he was using magic and when he wasn't would help him learn to control and use it more effectively. Apparently that was a common first step in mental magic training, since young mental mages often used magic without realizing it.

Now that he was paying attention, Thenio was mostly able to tell the difference, although the results left him feeling a little chagrined. There was a noticeable difference in the quality of his drawings depending on whether he'd used dream magic or not, which meant that a significant portion of his 'drawing' skill had actually been coming from the magic.

It was clear to him now why Eteon tried to carve without using magic as much as possible. Relying too much on magic would stunt the growth of the underlying art skills. On the other hand, it meant that his ability to use dream magic was better than he'd originally realized. If he took the time to separate and develop the two skills now, the results of combining them would be that much better later on.

Thenio hadn't been using magic on his first few sketches of Namyis, which made it hard to get all the details right. He'd only seen her for a few minutes, after all, and he'd been distracted by other things during part of that time. He was fairly sure he'd gotten her facial features a little off, and he remembered that the dress she was wearing was a soft shade of green, but he couldn't exactly remember the design.

For the next drawing, he deliberately tried to activate his dream magic. First he thought of various facts he knew about her: Namyis Ivoren. Ice Queen. Sixth-rank battlemage currently on the first squad of the Central Division. Recently transferred from the Northeast Division. Top ranked ice mage in Kafron. Her affinity was a little unusual because she had a crystal primary and water secondary. Most ice mages were the other way around. Probably due to that, she was apparently very good at stasis magic.

Keeping that information in the back of his mind, Thenio thought back to the moment when Namyis had held up her hands to show Ariom her magic dampening cuffs. Her innocent expression. The way that the silver bands shone in the sunlight and the white crystals in them sparkled.

He drew slowly, waiting for a clear picture to come into his head so that he could capture as many details as possible. And when he finished, he looked over the drawing with a satisfied expression. Yes, that was much better. This sketch captured her well enough that looking at it made Thenio start feeling a little cold again.

He glanced over at the control panel on the fireplace. He had remembered to turn the heat up, hadn't he? Iggy loved watching the flames, so sometimes Thenio turned them on for him without any heat. And he hadn't wanted to make it too hot since Amisi was right in front of the fire. But yes, it was set reasonably high.

Thenio shook his head. He'd been thinking so much about Ice Queen that he must have started imagining things.

He paused for a moment to smile wryly at Iggy, who'd dropped a little piece of chicken in the water and was chasing it around the bowl, trying to catch it in his mouth.

It would be a lot easier if he just pulled it out with his paw and then licked it off.... But he was probably having fun.

Thenio went back to his sketchbook and started another drawing. Now that he'd gotten into it, he wanted to draw the scene that was bothering him the most—that last glimpse he'd had of Namyis watching Amisi run into the house.

He knew that a lot of high-ranking sorcerers didn't have familiars because magic beasts tended to be uncomfortable around people whose magic power was much higher than their own.

It was all right for those who managed to form a contract when they were still relatively low-powered. Hurricane and Bubbles, for example. They were a married couple who were both demon hunters and were officially the top two wizards in Kafron, power-wise. But they both had familiars who had been with them since they were young, low-ranked sorcerers.

There were also a few who happened to get a familiar as high-rankers due to unusual circumstances. Like General Obarin. Bero had told Thenio that the general had made friends with a fire imp, a highly intelligent type of magic parasite, who later volunteered to form a contract with him in order to save his life after he developed a severe case of magic instability.

But for someone like Ice Queen, who'd been a child sorcerer...well. By the time she was old enough and her magic was stable enough for her to be able to form a familiar contract, it was probably already too late.

How did she feel about that? Was she sad? Did she envy other wizards when she saw them with their familiars?

Or maybe she didn't care. Maybe she didn't even like magic beasts. Maybe. But...remembering the slightly sad, but resigned, way she'd watched Amisi running away, Thenio had the strong impression that she very much did care....

Maybe she felt a lot like Thenio did when he had to avoid younger children at the park because he frightened them. Maybe watching other wizards with their familiars felt a lot like watching your classmates laugh and have fun together without being able to join in.

Maybe...despite one of them being a magic school dropout and the other being a famous battlemage...the two of them actually had quite a lot in common....

As he stared down at the calm but lonely expression on the face of the woman he'd just drawn, Thenio suddenly shivered.

He wasn't imagining it now. The room definitely felt cold. He shivered again and looked over at the windows, rubbing his arms. Had it started storming again? Had he left a window open?

No. The sun was still shining brightly. And both windows were closed. Then why...?

"Wah! No! Thenio's trying to turn into ice cream again!"

Thenio jumped at the sudden shout and turned his head to look at Iggy, who was staring at him with his eyes wide and his ears straight up in alarm.

"Iggy? What are you...?"

But before he could finish, Iggy had jumped off the table and run over to Amisi, who was poking her head out of the blanket to see what he was shouting about.

"Misi-cat! Hurry!" Iggy pawed at the blanket urgently. "You need to wake up and tell your friend that Thenio's magic is going all frozey again! He needs to tell Ariom to come help!"

"What?" Amisi blinked, looking confused. "Thenio's magic is...? Okay...hang on...I'm telling him...."

Iggy seemed satisfied by that. He left her side and jumped back onto the table, where he stood and stared up at Thenio, wriggling his body anxiously.

"I can push away Thenio's magic, right? Should I push it away? I don't know.... Should I breathe out sparks to make him warm? But Ariom told me not to breathe sparks at Thenio.... Um...I don't know...."

"Iggy, calm down! What are you even talking about? We don't need to call Ariom. He's busy right now. And my magic feels fine. It's not going out of control or anything. I just feel kind of cold...."

"No! Thenio's magic is not okay!" Iggy insisted. "It's all frozey like ice cream!"

"Really...." Thenio sighed. "I'm telling you, it feels perfectly normal. Here, look."

He held up his hand and channeled some magic power into it to make a simple orb, like he did every day during his magic practice.

A shape appeared, but rather than floating above his hand like a magic orb normally would, it dropped down and landed on his palm. It felt hard and very cold.

Thenio stared at the object he was now holding, not understanding what he was seeing.

A large chunk of ice had just appeared in his hand.

Ariom sat at the desk in his workroom, staring down at the scans he'd done of Namyis' cracked magic dampening cuff and doing his best to ignore the other two people in the room.

"Your stasis magic should prevent the trap formations from exploding, but it will also prevent us from using any magic to analyze the enchantment. So Ariom has figured out a method to isolate small parts of the enchantment matrix and remove them from the stasis magic one at a time. But it will be quite a delicate process, so we need to do some training together to prepare for the real thing. Ariom put together these enchanted wooden dolls for us to use as practice dummies."

"Oh, Ariom made these? They're cute!"

Ariom scowled at the scan printout in front of him. What was with that woman? Those were just basic wooden practice dummies. How were they cute? Why was she acting so cheerful while they were talking about dissecting a frozen, explosive corpse? And what was she doing calling him by his first name already? She was as bad as that Jasel fellow.... Didn't anyone ever teach combat wizards that you were supposed to treat a grandmaster with respect?

Well...she was a sixth-rank battlemage, which was more or less the equivalent of a grandmaster in the combat wizard certification system....

But that was beside the—

Ariom suddenly stopped glowering at his paperwork and raised his head. "Iggy?"

He stood up, making the other two pause their discussion and look over at him.

Ariom turned to Mideis. "I just got an alert from Iggy. Has Amisi said anything?"

"No, she...wait." Mideis held up his hand, an expression of concentration on his face. Then he frowned. "She says...Thenio's magic froze again? What does that mean? Iggy says he wants you to come...."

Ariom was heading for the door before he'd even finished. "You two stay here. Keep the barrier up. I'll contact you through Amisi."

He closed the workroom door behind him and then broke into a run, heading toward Thenio's bedroom.

When he arrived, he gave two quick raps on the door to let them know he was coming in, then he opened it and walked inside.

Thenio was seated on the sofa, staring blankly at something that he was holding in the palm of his hand. He was pale and shivering, and he didn't even look up as Ariom entered the room.

Iggy and Amisi were both standing on the table in front of the sofa. They were also staring at the thing in Thenio's hand, but they looked over at Ariom as he approached.

"Ariom!" Iggy's ears were back, and he was bouncing up and down, looking extremely worried. "Thenio's magic went frozey! And he made some ice! Look! He freezed it right in the air, okay? I saw it! Look!"

"I'm looking, Iggy," Ariom said in a soothing voice. "Calm down. He'll be all right."

He wasn't actually sure about that yet, but Iggy panicking wasn't going to help anything.

Ariom scanned Thenio's body with his magesight activated. What he saw made a deep frown appear on his face.

He was doing it again. This was the same thing that had happened when Thenio had come in contact with that ice mage's magic. But the reaction was even stronger this time. Why? She was still leaking magic like crazy, of course. But she was on the other side of the house, inside a strong magic barrier. There was no way it was reaching this far.

Well. Right now it didn't matter why it had happened. Thenio's body temperature was dropping rapidly. Ariom needed to deal with the problem first. Explanations could come later.

He looked at the lump of ice in Thenio's hand. It should be impossible for the boy to make something like that. But there it was.

Ariom really wanted to take a good look at that ice....

He quickly scanned through the contents of his space pocket. Did he have...? Yes. Good.

He held up his hand and a small, empty stasis box appeared in it. He unlatched the lid and flipped it open, then reached down and picked up the ice chunk. He dropped it into the box, closed and sealed the lid, and then stored it securely away in his space pocket.

Removing the ice seemed to have jolted Thenio out of his shocked stupor. He looked up at Ariom, his teeth chattering.

"A-Ariom? Th-that ice.... How d-did it...? W-what's going on? W-why is it so c-cold...?"

"Later," Ariom said firmly. "We'll talk later."

He sat down next to Thenio and then pulled another item out of his space pocket—a crystal synthesis tool. He wouldn't have been carrying one of these around a few months ago, but since Thenio had moved in, Ariom had added it to the magic toolkit he always kept in his space pocket.

It looked like that had been a good decision....

He set the synthesis tool on top of the open sketchbook on Thenio's lap, pausing briefly when he saw what the boy had been drawing.

Namyis? Did Thenio drawing her have something to do with his current state? It seemed unlikely that it was just a coincidence.

One more thing to investigate....

Ariom kept his hand on the base of the synthesis tool. Thenio was shivering so much that he was likely to knock it over. "You know what to do with this. I know you're shaky right now, but do your best to keep the magic flow steady."

Thenio nodded and slowly placed his trembling hands on the collector rods. Ariom could feel the base of the device shaking a little, but he held it steady as Thenio infused his magic into it.

It was clear from his expression that he had no idea why Ariom was suddenly asking him to condense magic crystals, but he didn't argue or complain. Ariom had been a little worried that he wouldn't be able to channel his magic properly, but he seemed to be doing all right. He'd been producing so many magic crystals over the past few months that it had probably become an automatic response whenever someone handed him a synthesis tool.

"All right, it's probably about full now," Ariom said a few minutes later.

Thenio stopped his magic flow and released the rods. Ariom lifted the synthesis device and opened it to remove the crystal.

"As expected, a lovely ice magic crystal." Ariom held the pale blue crystal up to the light for a moment. Then he set the synthesis device back down on Thenio's lap. "Go ahead and do another one. Can you hold it by yourself now?"

"I...think so."

Thenio was still shivering a little, but it was noticeably less than before. And a tiny bit of color had come back into his face.

Good. It was working.

As Thenio started infusing magic into the device a second time, Ariom got up and went over to the fireplace.

"Was one of you using this?" he asked, gesturing toward the blanket on the hearth.

"I was," Amisi said. "But I'm okay now. He can use it."

"Good. Thank you."

Ariom turned up the heat on the fireplace and then reached down to pick up the blanket. Having been sitting right in front of the fire, it was nice and warm. He carried it back over to the sofa and draped it around Thenio's shoulders.

"Here, this should help a little."

The room was already quite warm, but Thenio could use the extra heat right now. Iggy and Amisi both liked warm temperatures, so they shouldn't be bothered by it.

Ariom was the only one that would suffer.... But it was fine. He could change his shirt before he went back to the workroom if he needed to.

He sighed a little as he sat back down.

"Is it all right if I look at your sketchbook?"

When Thenio nodded, Ariom slid the book out from underneath the crystal synthesis tool. Then he flipped through the most recent pages, carefully examining the drawings of Namyis. It was very faint, but he could see traces of magic on the last two. The quality and detail of those drawings was also higher.

"Looks like you did these first drawings without magic but started using it on the last two. Is that right?"

"Right."

"At what point did you start feeling cold?"

Thenio hesitated, apparently thinking. "I first started feeling it when I met Ice Queen, and I was still a little cold when we got up here. Then...I guess it got better? I started drawing and didn't really think about it again until about the time I finished the second to last picture. I felt a little cold then, but not really enough to bother me. It didn't get really bad until I was finishing up the last picture."

"Hmm...." Ariom looked at the two pictures again. "Yes, the magic traces on this one are a little stronger. Interesting.... Oh, that second crystal should be about done now."

Thenio stopped emitting magic power and handed the device back to Ariom, who emptied it again and looked closely at the crystal. Then he held it up for Thenio to see.

Thenio's eyes widened a little. "It didn't change? Is it because they were made so close together?"

"That's part of it. But there's something else going on here.... I'm still not exactly sure what it is. I thought I had it figured out after your encounter with the friendly ice monster earlier. I was just starting to feel proud of myself for coming up with a theory about why your magic keeps changing to different types all the time. But then you had to go and bring up a whole new batch of questions with these drawings." Ariom shook his head. "Honestly.... You're as bad as Eteon. Five more questions for every answer...."

Thenio made a face. "Sorry...."

Ariom chuckled a little. "Well, it's not your fault. But it means I can't really give you any proper answers yet. We'll need to do some more testing first. Which makes me very glad that Uncle Bero is already planning to come again soon...."

"Humerus is coming to visit us again?" Iggy asked, his ears perking up.

"That's right." Ariom nodded. "Uncle Bero and I were discussing it via messages this morning. He doesn't know the exact day yet, but they'll probably come sometime next week."

He smiled as Iggy's tail started waving happily. Then he handed the synthesis device to Thenio once again.

"Here. Try for one more crystal. I want to drain as much magic out of you as we can."

Thenio raised his eyebrows a little. "You're sure? Is that safe?"

"I think it's better than leaving all that ice magic inside you. And I have some magic recovery medicine that should work fine on you. Focilo gave it to me."

"Oh. Okay...." Thenio made a reluctant face, but he obediently took the device and started channeling magic power into it again. "Can you at least tell me what your theory is, about my magic changing?"

"I guess I can tell you the gist of it. But keep in mind that it could be wrong, okay?"

Thenio nodded.

"Okay, then. How much do you know about the mana cycle?"