"What, that's adorable," giggles Bella, flipping through the summary. "The Belfry! You non-Bells don't feel left out or anything?"

"I don't feel left out, and none of the other me's did, either. The name's cute, Adarins are just - a bit more difficult to find cute names for. We need to come up with a better alt group name for us, something that's as easy as 'Bell'..."

"Nothing drops out really well from your names, alas..."

"Yeah. It's terrible. Maybe we'll think of something interesting that fits us all. Eventually."

"You don't really have an obvious point of commonality, like, say, Bell notebooks. If the other Bells were named - Minerva and Lauren and Joshua and Galadriel or something - we'd be able to settle on some language's word for 'Pen' or something."

"... Something to do with the number thing we do? Maybe? But I can't think of anything good out of that..."

"...Yeah, me either," Bella agrees after a moment's thought.

"And about the only thing that adorably goes with Bells are Whistles, which - very cute, but doesn't fit us at all. Also, I'm pretty sure Prime would object on the basis of not having a Bell."

"He could have one, he has just decided he doesn't want one for some reason and she's not being pushy."

"Fool," snorts Max. "Him, not her."

"We are pretty great. But so are you, I think she's spooked by the Hex set too much to make a first move..."

"Thanks! That makes sense. The Hex set are kinda depressing. Poor guys."

"Yeah. They seem to - have gotten comfortable with operating as a unit? They gravitate towards each other when we're in a big group. I guess that's progress?"

"I think so. I mean, if nothing else, they get a cool platonic life partner to take over the world with."

"That sounds so heartbreaking in context, though..."

"... A bit. I made myself sad, now."

Snuggle?

"I suppose. Maybe they're making lots of progress behind closed doors and feel self-conscious about public displays of affection or something."

"Do you want to ask them that question? Because I don't."

"I'm tempted, but - no."

"Yeah. I kinda want to know the answer, but asking the question would be awkward."

"And they might be annoyed."

"And that. That too."

"Mmm. No? I mean, the degree, but - we're not exactly applying for jobs in a regular sense."

"Is there much real risk that when we are ready to start Hogwarts, people won't want to come because we're not credentialed?"

"Probably not," snorts Darren. "And it's annoying how it keeps eating our time anyway. So. Want to be college dropouts together?"

"I suppose so. Do we have a fake explanation or is it just 'later, guys, you can't handle the truth'?"

"Ha. We could make up something ridiculous."

"We won the lottery and are retiring to the Cayman Islands to while away our days with the joy of scuba."

Darren giggles. "Tempting, but people could look up the lottery and see that we weren't winners."

"My great aunt died and left me lots of money, and we are going to travel to Paris and immerse ourselves in the fashion scene?"

"Pffffff. Yes. That, let's do that."

"I'm pretty sure nobody will believe us. Exhibit A: your ability to lie comma lack thereof. Exhibit B: the fashion scene." She gestures at her jeans and t-shirt. "Let's be mysterious. We are dropping out for unspecified entrepreneurship."

Darren snorts with laughter. "Oh, well. I didn't need a ridiculous cover story anyway. Mysterious reasons, hurray!"

Snuggle. "Hurray!"

Snuggle! "We probably can't manage a sneaky daeva-made house without living in space or underground or something, but - indoors is completely doable. Soooo. Any furniture you've secretly been pining for?"

"...Hammock?"

"We can have a hammock! I've never had one before."

"A big one for deer-and-kitty snuggles."

"Heh, yeah. Comfy deer-and-kitty snuggles."

Purrrrrr.

There are, unfortunately, no sounds for deer contentment. He will stick with nuzzling. Nuzzle, nuzzle.

"We're closed, right? I thought I locked the door and flipped the sign."

"I certainly didn't open it. Let's go check. With scrolls. Because paranoia."

"Yeah." She grabs her binderful of standards, adopts her minimally incriminating midform, and desnuggles.

"Are you the shop owner?" wonders the dragon, whose medallion is tucked very discreetly into his shirt and who is currently in entirely human form.

"One of them," he clarifies. "Sorry, I'd thought the shop was closed, I must have forgotten to flip the sign."

The dragon meanders to a display of charms near the stairs. "You keep odd hours."

"A bit, yeah. College makes it a bit tough, but we try to keep them regular. Even odd as they are."

"You're students," says the dragon. He runs a finger along a charm. It is made with some of Bella's shed feathers.

"And where'd you learn your magic?"

"There is a fucking dragon after me and I need the big guns, now! Where are the daeva?"

"Flying! Somewhere. I - can try to find them, how close is the dragon, is it coming through the portal?"

The dragon swats her with his tail without moving his claws away from Phix. Phix is squirming and trying various combinations of anatomy to escape, to no avail.

The 'assassin' in question can't manage to reply, it comes out as a gurgle. Being stood on after having a chant interrupted - also bad.

"Not! Totally not. Why, wanna test it?" Breathing break. "Rae! If he kills me, drop the ceiling!"

"There is a dragon in the Belfry attacking the catlike Bell! Go! Save her."

The dragon's eyes narrow. "You," he decides, "are also bluffing. If you could kill me you'd have done it instantly."

"Sphinx trickery," diagnoses the dragon, and he squishes Idania as hard as he's squishing Phix - that is to say, hard enough that she can't talk. "Silence. I want to speak to whoever is operating your conspiracy in, shall we say, a civilized manner."

"For your pet human. Or don't you want her after all?"

".... I'm listening," he says, grudgingly. "Talk."

"I want the surrender of the entire coalition of sphinxes once and for all -"

- Edarial pokes his head back through the portal, and hits the dragon with the knockout spell.

Edarial gets to helping people out from under the dragon. Phix first. Because she looks like Iobel.

Darren celebrates by throwing up again.

Phix coughs and hacks and and drags herself away from the dragon. She attempts to get to her boyfriend but her magic has other ideas; it heals her and leaves her collapsed in an awkward midform on the floor by the dragon's wing.

Katydid, eyes aglow, strides through the portal and promptly drops her charge.

Rain looks at her, smiles a little and resists the urge to scoop her up into a hug right then and there. He - will get everyone out from under the dragon, first.

"I appear to have missed most of the drama, what happened?"

"Well, dragon, first. He pinned Phix immediately. Hit me with his tail, and I'm pretty sure, broke my leg. I stabbed him, Max showed up and got interrupted during a spell and - I don't know what that means, but I think it's bad." She looks at Max, who nods a bit before going back to coughing. "And then I tried stabbing again, got snatched, and Rae and I tag-teamed to try and hold off on killing us. Then Rain zapped him."

"...I can fix your leg. I have no idea if the healing I have will do for Max. Where are the daeva?" Iobel starts charging a spell to heal Idania.

"Rae was trying to find them, Spring too, I think, but - I don't know. Healing will be great."

The spell goes off presently. "Max, I'll try something generic, but I don't know if it'll help," she says, and her eyes glow again.

Meanwhile, Spring has successfully located the daeva flying lazily in the clouds above Perinixu's domain. "There you are - hurry - dragon in the Belfry!" she exclaims.

"Wh - how'd it get in?" asks Cam, changing directions.

Adana follows, eyes wide. "I thought their portal was hidden?"

Max nods a little to Katydid, and crawls his way over to his girlfriend.

Also meanwhile, Rae informs Cricket: "Rain handled the dragon. You were instrumental. Thank you."

"Perhaps he will eventually redeem himself," says Cricket, ceasing in his search for Zevros to sit nonchalantly in a hallway and lick a paw. "You are welcome."

"It needs a password," says Spring, prompting her necklace to obey the direction change and lead the daeva back. "But he could have chased them in if he was following close enough."

"That seems like an oversight, if their world's so dangerous - I'll bother Prime or Cypress about it, see if we can prevent this from happening again."

"I'm well ahead of you on that, but first, dragon, meet indestructible magic daeva."

"Yeah. Indestructible magic daeva. We should - augh, I feel so stupid now, we should have thought of this."

"What's our plan of attack on a dragon, angel? I introduce it to extremely heavy jewelry and - can it breathe fire?"

"I think so."

"And you stick its teeth together?"

"Yeah. I can also stick him to the floor, or - actually sink him into it and turn it to steel around his feet. Let's see him get out of that."

"He's a critter like the Medallion alts, he might be able to shift out of something like that... for that matter I'll have to design the jewelry carefully."

"Hm. Good point. Then - one of our first priorities should be getting his medallion away from him, so everything else we do works."

"I'll weigh him down and you evaporate the chain? If that doesn't work I'll encase it in Styrofoam or something. It's probably valuable, you don't want to wreck the medallion itself, but I think the chains are normal."

"Yeah. Just enough to get it away from him, not - permanently destroy it or something."

"She self-healed. I don't know why her magic didn't kick in while the dragon was pinning her. I'm charging to fix Max now, but I can drop it if you guys can handle it?"

Max has, thankfully, upgraded from 'retching' to 'coughing.' How nice for him. But with this upgrade, he manages to retrieve his magic marker and helpfully write out, "INTERRUPTED CHANT." He touches his throat, and then goes back to coughing.

"I. Am not sure what to do with that," admits Adana. "If it's a magical effect and not a physical one I don't think there's anything I can do. I can try anyway?"

"I don't know if my spell will help either. But I'll be done charging it in a minute. Interrupting chants is extremely unpleasant, good to know..."

Rain doesn't look particularly inclined to start talking, but he does give Iobel occasional expressionless glances. He would like very much to whisk her away and probably freak out a little over his strong emotional reaction, but she needs to finish her spell first. So he will just be over here. Expressionless.

"Yeah. Um. Okay, Max, do you want me to try and fix it, which could be risky considering I don't actually know what's wrong, or leave it alone and see what happens?"

This one Max tries to respond to verbally, but when he opens his mouth no sound comes out. He briefly has a confused face, before his next coughing fit hits and that quickly goes away. When it subsides enough for him to write, he replies in magic marker, "LEAVE."

Presently Iobel's spell goes off. It's the most generic one she has - clear the airway, normalize temperature, stop bleeding, and calm swelling and inflammation. It treats symptoms, not causes, but since she doesn't have any spells purpose-built to undo the damage done by a swallowed incantation that will have to do.

Cam, meanwhile, weighs the dragon down - all limbs and tail and neck, with a nice fireproof shield between the dragon's immobilized head and the rest of the room. When he wakes up he won't be able to go anywhere.

Katydid's spell does absolutely nothing to help. Max offers her a little sad smile. The coughs are getting less pronounced, but he still hasn't managed to use his vocal chords.

"I'll stash it in - we should have numbered the rooms. The first purpose-to-be-determined room on the left." Spring takes it and flies away to do that.

"Right. Then - I guess we're just waiting for everyone to wake up or - recover from magic backlash."

"Probably not, honestly."

"I mean, I made the weights very heavy, but if the dragon is magically strong or something I'm not even sure we want the critters here, Phix would just be hard to drag."

"Have Rae tell Cricket, or mirror us, if you need us," suggests Iobel. She heads back for the Hex portal.

"Sure."

"...Hi?" She snuggles confusedly.

"Hi," he murmurs into her hair. "Turns out, there was an - I was - Phix looks like you. And she was pinned under a dragon. For about half a second my head was entirely screaming."

"Fine. I just - needed to hug you and know you were okay and have you be very far away from the dangerous dragon."

"Are you sure I'm okay? You don't need to have a closer look and check?"

That makes him snort with laughter. "I - what constitutes a 'closer look'? Are you secretly bleeding and neglecting to tell me?"

"Well, I don't think so. But your peace of mind!"

"Ha! Wouldn't it be for your peace of mind, too, if you only 'don't think so' instead of knowing for sure?"

"I'm not going to pretend you'd have to drag me kicking and screaming to the proposed inspection, now."

"Well, good." Pause. "... We might be interrupted by a dragon, though."

"I don't think the daeva need our help with the dragon."

"Fair enough." Nuzzle. "Then - I'd like to make sure you're entirely okay."

He does.

Meanwhile, Adana looks at Idania and asks, "Is it possible that I could get a vial of the holy sand? So we don't have a repeat of - being unable to be found."

"You know an alt of me, does that count?"

"I don't even have a Rae vial, just Perinixu ones," says Spring, returning from stashing the dragon's medallion.

"I am willing to give Ayabel a vial of my sand," says Raezenoth. "But just because I know another version of you does not mean that I know you."

"I'm not, alas, especially useful under emergency conditions."

"Then you do not have to have a vial."

"Maybe you and either or both of the daeva should play some board games. How did Katydid's cat win you over so thoroughly?"

"We bonded over our mutual dislike of large bodies of water. And I like his style. He is brutally honest."

Idania giggles at 'mutual dislike of large bodies of water.'

So does Spring.

"Alas, I have no special hatred for bodies of water of any size."

"They are filled with terrible gods that are unfair and untrustworthy. Avoid them."

"Uh, noted."

Phix stirs, whimpering.

Max scoots closer to her, looking worried but still effectively mute. Hair pet? Hair pet.

"...Dragon?" she mumbles into his knee.

"Hey there, the dragon's been knocked out courtesy of Rain and had his medallion yoinked and all his moving parts weighed down," soothes Cam. "Your boyfriend ate half a spell and it wasn't so nutritious but he seems to be improving. If you wanna fix him too we can handle the dragon if he wakes up before you."

Max smiles at Phix and keeps petting her hair. He's fine with not being fixed with magic right this second.

Max shrugs a little in an 'I don't know' gesture. And then he snuggles his girlfriend protectively. No more torture for his girlfriend, thank you, one dose was more than enough.

Her boyfriend makes a face. How great.

"... Does it include other types of magic? We should check."

"I'd be really surprised, but - yeah, daeva, poke the dragon and see if your mojo behaves."

Cam pokes the dragon. He makes an M&M and eats it. "Just you, Phix."

"Okay. That's - good to know. Annoying for you, Phix, but still."

Max nods. And - scoots himself and Phix away from the dragon, a bit. Protectively. His magic fairy princess kitty. Bad dragon.

"I wonder how it works," muses Idania. "I'm working on the rune magic thingy, but - I wish the weird magic species effects had well-charted reasons for being magic."

"Sorry, but in spite of Mr. Smaug's delusions I'm the only known living sphinx and can't give you much of a body of literature on how I work. Likewise with the dragon, unless he's got family."

"Yeah. Blah, I'm mostly just annoyed because it's such delightfully straightforward magic with rules and it makes sense and everything and no one bothered to record it and that's upsetting."

"Well, we'll reconstruct it and make lots of copies, you can be in the research arm of my school. Anybody know how long the spellbinder knockout usually lasts?"

"No idea, sorry. We could maybe mirror Hex and ask...?"

"I don't think it matters. I'm staying here until he wakes up regardless of whether it's another five minutes or several hours."

"Good point. Not worth bothering them, then."

Phix snuggles her coughing boyfriend. "Note to self, do not be interrupted while incanting," she mutters.

The coughing has gotten to be less pronounced, but - yeah. Still coughing.

"Speaking of. Um. Adana? Can you...?" She motions to the remains of Max's previous meal.

"I think I'm superfluous here," Spring says, and she departs.

"I'll stick around in case the dragon decides to continue to be dangerous under several tons of osmium."

"Same."

Max snuggles his magic fairy princess kitty. He's not going anywhere.

His magic fairy princess kitty is happy to be snuggled.

"Hello," says Adana, almost pleasantly.

Max gives the dragon a death glare.

And that causes Max to smile. Just a bit.

"Your show, Phix," offers Adana.

"Sphinx Coalition?" writes Max, raising an eyebrow.

(That causes Adana to snicker, just a bit.)

"I'm pissed about the torture," adds Max via magic marker. "Instead of asking."

"We're actually quite nice," adds Adana. "But. Hi, we're members of the cavalry. Let's try not to be unfriendly now, hmm?"

"Should we have horses?" wonders Cam. "Banners. Muskets. Somebody to play a brass instrument of some kind to announce us."

Max, for his part, will not ruin this threatening moment by coughing. He glares, though. If looks could kill, the dragon would probably be dead by now.

"That doesn't really seem like decisively ending it, honestly, showing up in our stronghold alone after you'd had your minions repeatedly trounced? By three people? That does not strike me as 'decisively ending,' that strikes me as 'suicidal.'"

"It still seems quite reckless, he rushed in here without knowing what was behind the portal after losing several times. Alone."

"Honestly? It's better to leave your enemy alone for a bit while you figure out what you're up against. Even if they are - breeding or performing sinister magical experiments."

"No more strategic advice," agrees Adana. "And growling really isn't polite."

"Prison," suggests Max. "W/ Rae or Peri."

"Ehh. I'm not sure they'd want to be prison guards, Rae was skeptical about handing over a vial of sand."

"Cameras?"

"... Please tell me you don't want to kill him?"

"I'm considering it."

"We have a friend who can resurrect the dead, we know it works on critters, all we'd need is his name, and then he could stop taking up space and trying to hurt Phix until we were more prepared to deal with him."

Adana... does not look entirely convinced.

Max does, though. He nods. And gives the dragon a death glare.

"On the other hand, we could put him in space," says Cam. "I don't have a map of the solar system here, but I could fly around by visual nav, and I could make the ship around him with a little help from Adana regarding the floor and we could replace what we moved around. He'd be harder to maintain that way, and I don't know what dragons eat when they're yea big or how well it stays preserved in jars, I don't want to make daily grocery runs. But it doesn't involve him spending any time dead."

"That I'd be happier with."

Max frowns, and then writes, "Writing utensils + time = magic runes !!!"

"Ah, crap, yeah, and if it works like daeva circles he could do it in strawberry jam. Angel, is keeping him immobile like this for safety maybe with elevator music on in the background really that much of an improvement over storing him in dead form?"

"He's already gotten more consideration than his hirelings did. We don't even have all their names to give Ice someday-maybe, and he authorized every single claw they pried out of my fucking paws."

"That. Probably counts as psychological torture," admits Adana. "We should probably ask him his preferences? For his opinion on all of this, prove that we're better than he is."

It looks like all they're getting out of the dragon right now is a growl and a little fire. Cam's shieldy thing stops it from going much of anywhere.

"I mean, there are - more humane solutions available, but we don't have the manpower to run them, considering how many people can actually take on a dragon. I could do it, Cam could do it, some others could probably also manage it, but we have some serious time constraints already. And - ugh, no daeva is going to want to play prison guard for free stuff." She sighs, and leans on Cam. "This is hard. Why are there no go-to moral solutions here?"

"High stakes, lots of possibilities, and total lack of precedent for daeva-and-friends trying to keep a dragon from attacking a sphinx?"

"Yeah. That."

"Trial?" suggests Max.

"Where would we scare up anybody impartial? Try him according to what justice system?"

Max makes a helpless shrugging gesture, and writes, "I think kill, trial's for Adana."

"... Thanks," sighs Adana. "I think."

"Now I'm wondering if 'having your Bell be in life-threatening circumstances to the point where killing people seems reasonable' is just an Important Adarin Perspective-Forming Experience she's going to wind up skipping because Cam's indestructible."

"Um. I'm. Pretty okay with skipping that, thanks, I like Cam not being in a life-threatening situation very much."

"I'm not saying I want you to try it out, I'm just finding it inconvenient that you haven't and therefore don't have quite as personal a resonance with he sent a lava monster after us and we almost died and he sent a darkness monster after me and it swallowed me right out of Darren's lap and then I got fucking tortured and then he invaded our home and chased us here intending to, quote, end a war before it could start."

Adana flinches.

"Let Adana talk to dragon," suggests Max. "Alternate solution she likes?"

"You want a while to play good cop?" Phix relays. "We'll go - hell, we could go home and not be too far off."

"Maybe he'll do more than growl at you," suggests Cam.

"Maybe," she agrees. "It's - worth trying."

Phix gives the dragon a long look, then, still snuggling her deerly beloved, heads for the portal to Medallion.

"Holler if you need me," Cam murmurs to his angel, and then he flaps to an exit.

Max gives the dragon another glare. Try anything, dragon, and there will be a peryton that's not going to hesitate to kill you. Then, he follows his love.

"I do not understand what - non-sphinx magic it is that you command."

"I'm a bit wary to give you information on all of the ins and outs of it. But - we have essentially unlimited material resources, both space and extraplanar travel, and a few others that wouldn't be applicable here without quite a lot of invested time."

"Would you believe me if I said I surrender?"

"... Depends on what your surrender involves?"

"I would go home and mind my own business until the sphinx decides to pick up her ancestors' mantle and kill me."

"She is really not the - 'pick up murderous ancestors' mantle' type. If she were, I wouldn't be working with her. What I'm worried about is you go home, gather up all you've learned so far from this conversation, and then try to kill her again but with more success."

"Apparently you can resurrect the dead," says the dragon dryly.

"We can. I've actually died once, it was unpleasant. Just because we can resurrect the dead doesn't mean we are willing to die."

"But it means that I cannot keep her dead. Cannot keep any sphinxes dead. Eventually they will all be back and there will be a coalition of them whether there is one already or not, and then they will find me and kill me, but I could spend the intervening time putting my affairs in order." Pause. "I am in the middle of a book."

"... Why are you sure they will want to find you and kill you?"

"You cannot fathom how massive the war was. If this sphinx doesn't want to kill me, her grandparents or her great-grandparents will."

"We are, surprisingly enough, not willing to resurrect people that want to commit murder because they want to pick back up a war that ended and cause mass havoc. Not unless we have ways to keep them from doing that - mass havoc, war, pain, death thing."

"Dragons and sphinxes," says the dragon, "are natural enemies."

"Where I'm from, angels and demons are supposed to be, too. I'm an angel. My boyfriend's a demon."

"Rumor has it he is indestructible. I am not."

"Yeah. But - I thought demons were all terrible until I was proven wrong by Cam. What exactly makes dragons and sphinxes 'natural enemies'? Because whatever that is, it might be based on things that aren't true."

"I have left my history texts at home," says the dragon dryly.

"Okay, well, Phix is unlikely to care about terrible things that anyone's ancestors did in anything but the practical sense. As in, if your great grandfather did something horrible to her great grandfather, she won't care or blame it on you in particular. So when dealing with us, history doesn't matter so much, and we are the ones in control of the resurrection magic."

"I'm a different kind of angel," she says, gently. "From very far away. You're not on Earth anymore, if you hadn't figured that out by now. I live here, but I didn't always. I actually was born on the Moon of another Earth."

"Did you ever say if you'd believe me that I would go home and mind my own business?"

"I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Within reason. Probation, of a sorts, might be possible? Not just - let you go home and drop off of our radar entirely, but let you go home and not die or be chained to a floor."

"I will," he mentions, "need my medallion to fit in my home." Pause. "I could also very much benefit from some painkillers. I have an appalling headache."

"I'll have to talk to someone about getting your medallion. And - painkillers, I can get. What kinds of painkillers work on you, are there dosage issues...?"

"I don't know. I've never tried to take them like - this."

"... I was under the impression that was your natural form?"

"Yes, but it isn't very good for opening bottles of aspirin."

"Good point. Hold on, I'll go get some aspirin and we can - try to figure that out. Er. If you try to escape while I'm gone and manage it I suspect that they'll go with the 'killing you' method so you don't cause any more trouble, rather than letting me try to negotiate, so - please don't. Okay?"

"I can't move," growls the dragon. "Not even enough to scratch the itch under my wing."

"Sorry," she offers. "I can scratch it for you, if you like?"

He looks at her dubiously. "You and what claws?"

"Left wing," he sighs. "Just under the joint."

"Thank you," says the dragon.

"Good luck with that," sighs the dragon.

Her boyfriend is hanging out on the mountainside near a shrub, with his computer. "Hi, angel. ...Did you leave the dragon unsupervised?"

"Hey. Yyyyyeah, I told him it would be really stupid to try and escape and manage it, because then we just get tired of dealing with him and go with the killing method. Plus, I don't have cellphone service, I couldn't exactly call anyone to watch him."

"Should get a mage to make us those little mirrory rings. What do you need?"

"Aspirin, he's complaining of a headache. And also he - seems to want to surrender and just go home and not try to attack Phix anymore. Because he knows we can resurrect the dead."

"And we know that he doesn't want to go get more dragons and kill Ice so that we cannot readily resurrect the dead how?"

"He doesn't know about Ice. I declined to tell him how any of our magic worked."

"He knew the password to the portal. Somehow. I'm not sure I want to count on him not having more intel than we mention to his face."

"... Fair. I should go find Idania or something to watch him while we're talking, because paranoia."

"Good plan. You could go back to the dragon and I can find her?" He makes a bottle of aspirin and hands it over.

The dragon is right where she left him.

"I'm not sure I can actually swallow from here," remarks the dragon.

"I'm nooot sure how to solve that without letting your head loose entirely."

"Which I suppose is out of the question."

"Yes. Sorry."

"Then I suppose I'll go on having this headache, won't I?"

Adana makes a helpless gesture. "I'm afraid so, I'm genuinely sorry."

"No doubt. How goes convincing your friends that I can be sent home?"

"They're worried that you are planning to retrieve your dragon friends and attack us again in the hopes that you could get rid of our ability to resurrect. Which - I don't think you could manage, but it's a legitimate concern."

"None of my friends are dragons."

"Okay, well, dragon acquaintances or children or family members or - whatever. You have a definite bin of monsters, we don't know how big that bin is, or how much trouble the things in it would be. That, basically."

"She has managed them all handily, her and her peryton assassin."

"... Peryton assassin? He's not an assassin."

"Did she kill all those people herself while chained up in an antimagic field?" wonders the dragon.

"Well. No. But that was after she was kidnapped, that's not assassinating people, that is rescuing his girlfriend from people who were torturing her. Although he was using murdery methods to do it, I'll give you that one."

"He would kill me now if she asked, I can tell that much."

"I didn't go after her from a vacuum, either. You cannot comprehend..." He shuts his eyes and sighs smokily.

"That's a bit insulting to my intelligence, isn't it? Or my experience. I willingly got myself into a situation where it was likely that I would be raped in order to save several hundred lives. I was threatened with a killswitch in my head and had the wonderful choice of 'set a demon on the instigator and not be able to control what he does at all' and 'probably die, unless she somehow managed to break me and make me do some really terrible things.' Which, as it turns out, didn't matter much, because I got myself shot in the head later. My brother died in prison. My dad took up becoming a drunk after my death. My mom's in an insane asylum. I get it. Terrible things happen, and you want more than anything to prevent them. Right?"

"But you have no experience with being the last dragon left alive, thinking the war that killed your entire family was over, and finding that you were wrong, that there is one left, that all your ancestors' paranoia in trying to track them down and make sure it was finished was for nothing because there is one and who can say how many more left."

"So obviously, their method didn't work. Tracking down sphinxes to make sure the war is 'finished' by torturing them for information and then killing them has managed to get people from another dimension pissed at you. It has made you the bad guy. Okay? So try some diplomacy, she is not her ancestors, she literally had zero desire to go after dragons before you started attacking her. Same with her boyfriend, I'm pretty sure that if left to their own devices their plan was 'learn and then teach magic' and possibly also 'figure out how to make medallions and then hand that knowledge to anyone that will listen.'"

"So I've been told," mutters the dragon, closing his eyes again.

"And I suppose that when she's got a litter of kits none of them will have the slightest inclination to pick up where their forebears left off, either? When she resurrects ancestors she has not met, they will peacefully reestablish the species without any interest in stamping out the last of the once-great race of the dragons?" he drawls.

"Why would her kids have any reason to go after dragons? Why would she resurrect people that want to murder innocent dragons for no other reason than their species?"

He looks like he'd shrug if he could. "She fetches her mother - her mother wants her parents - they want theirs - will she look them in the eye and say no, I don't know those people, I would like to protect a dragon I nearly chose to kill myself? I doubt it very much."

"Okay, fine, then why do you think she would just let them kill people? Actually, why do you think I would, personally I would take offense to sphinxes killing dragons just because, and quite frankly I'm scarier than both of you."

"When there are enough sphinxes it will not be a matter of letting them do anything."

"Actually, it would be, because the person with control over the resurrection can say, 'No, I will not resurrect any more of you, and also, here, meet my invincible scary magic friends, they do not like murder.'"

"You have no idea how powerful she is," he murmurs, "do you."

"I think she must not have learned to control it well yet. I was - hurrying before she managed it."

"They can do - nearly anything."