Marked Chapter Twenty

I'd been peripherally aware of the fact that I'm not what anyone would think of as physically fit. Today's little march through the swamp, however, fairly well illustrated to me just how far from it I am. Even with my energy restoration ability-- and I need to think of something to call it that doesn't sound completely lame-- I struggled to keep pace with Nax, and now that we've stopped I feel ready to fall over. As she returns to her normal size, I use Summon Sustenance, filling the table with rolls, before making a beeline for the bed. "I'm gonna get a nap in," I say, as I peel down to my underwear and climb into the bed. 

It's probably a testimony to my exhaustion and how uncomfortably warm it is, that I barely think about the fact that I'm half naked in front of her before I'm sound asleep. 

My nap is troubled. I dream of frog men in government uniforms who demand back taxes and inform me that it's going to cost an arm and a leg, literally. Waking up barely gives me respite; it's uncomfortably hot and humid, and shifting about on the covers only moves me off the hot spot into slightly less hot. Worse still, the shifting sends violent pains through my legs, and I groan despite myself. 

"Is your arm still paining you?" I hear from my right. I turn over with a grimace to see Nax in her pool across the fire pit. "You sound injured, and smell of it again, although not as much as when you arrived."

"My legs hurt," I admit. "I never have to hike this far at home." 

"What do your family do for a trade?" she asks me. "Are they clarks, or some sort of intellectuals, something like that?"

"No, it... it's not really like that? Parents don't really determine what you'll do as an adult back home. I mean, a little, but not a lot. Like, we can be whatever we want to be, really. My dad manages the hiring for the Dockworkers Union. My mom was a university professor before she died. I... haven't really decided what I want to do yet, but I haven't even finished high school yet." 

"'High' school?" she answers. "The use of 'yet' implies that high education is not the final step for your learning. How much schooling is typical?"

"It depends, really. Most people have at least some college education, but any decent job requires at least a bachelor's degree, and master's or even doctorates are needed for really important jobs. Dad has a bachelor's in management, but dropped out of anything higher when Mom got pregnant with me."

"Fascinating. How old are you?"

"Fifteen." Hearing myself say it is depressing. "I won't be legally an adult for another three years." 

"Matters are different here," Naxylotriam responds, folding her arms over the edge of the pool and resting her chin on them. It's a surprisingly human seeming gesture from her. "Here, you can pursue a trade as soon as you can provide a service or product that people will buy. Age is, of course, a factor in credibility and respect, but it is not deterministic." 

Sounds kind of nice, if you discount walking everywhere and living in a preindustrial-- no, wait, she said that they have manufacturing here, just not to our degree, so early industrial?-- society. I try to ignore the little voice in the back of my mind that whispers if I'd been born here, I could have left Dad behind me and never had to worry about the federal government. Having powers doesn't force you into one side or the other of a never ending cycle of violence. People here use their powers for all sorts of business. It's a fundamental part of their manufacturing, if I'm understanding Nax correctly. "It's tempting," I admit. 

"I wish to set out again once the afternoon sun is a little lower," Nax says. "We still have a good amount of daylight left, and with the sun at our backs rather than overhead or in our faces, the travel will be less arduous. Plus, your mark means that we will not be hampered by the need to spend the last hour of daylight setting up a camp." 

"That's good, I guess," I reply. 

"Indeed. Convenient." Nax looks at me with a relaxed expression. "You would be a logistical dream for any of the armies of the five nations." 

"The five nations?"

"Aundair, Breland, Cyre, Thrane, and Karnath. Although Cyre is virtually extinct now, after the Day of Mourning. Most of Cyre is covered by a magical catastrophe that makes traversing it potentially deadly to anything living. It was the impetus that spurred the Treaty of Thronehold which put an end to the Last War." 

"Why would they-- oh," I stop, as I realize what she implying. "As I am now, I could feed hundreds, even thousands of soldiers per day. That's what you meant?" 

Nax nods. "In part, yes. Without a heavy dependence on a supply train or forage, an army can move faster and with more impunity. But moreover if the mechanism to recharge a dragonmark could be replicated, it would significantly increase the impact a single dragonmarked individual could have on an operation, and conversely would increase the leverage a government would have over the houses."

That doesn't seem right. "How does that follow?" But then I stop talking, and think a moment. There's something here; I sort of notice that Naxylotriam is watching me with interest, even a sort of gleeful anticipation. "You want me to work it out for myself." 

She nods eagerly. I sigh. "Great. Okay. So dragonmarks... are rare. Right? And strong ones even more so." I frown. Industrialization. Where I came from, it changed everything. How we lived, how we worked, how we played. The mass migration of people from rural to urban living. Only here, that industrialization is fueled by the houses. At their core, by their dragonmarks. Not so much as a power source, although there's that too, but as a focal point. "Not enough to go around." Except. "Except if all the dragonmarks are like mine, or at least, all the strongest ones, then there's MORE than the demand. Supply and demand. The surplus exceeds the need, and it becomes a buyer's market instead of a seller's. Am I getting close?"

"Close enough for what you know of this world." If the sound she was making was about forty decibels lower and maybe two octaves higher, it'd be purring instead of something I can feel in my chest. "The point is, of course, aside from the threat you pose to the status quo by having a mark entirely outside your race, none of the houses stand to benefit as much from studying you or exploiting your powers as they would potentially lose if they lost you to a government or rival house. The ability to enhance a dragonmark in such a way could be as paradigm shifting as discovering the secerets to crafting schema was. Still, I knew you were a clever little thing." 

"But even if the rapid recharging thing did become common, they still have a monopoly. Couldn't the houses just withhold services? Artificial scarcity." 

"Artificial scarcity only functions as long as nobody is willing to break ranks," Nax replies. "And enough dragonmarked renegades to the houses have been excoriated over their respective histories to show how well that would go."

It takes me a few seconds to dredge that word up from my subconscious; I haven't heard it spoken and only read it once in the dictionary a few years ago while looking up 'exorbitant'. "Excoriated?" I repeat back to her weakly. I remember it had two definitions; the one that stands out to me is 'removal of skin'.

"Indeed. One of the harshest punishments the houses hand out. Usually fatal, too. Removing a dragonmark is difficult. It goes quite deep into a bearer's flesh, and tends to grow back in a survivor if not removed in its entirety."

And now I feel a bit queasy. "Would they do that to me?" I ask shakily. I remember what it was like to be chemically burned on my scalp; imagining this makes me wobble a bit and I'm not even standing up. 

"Doubtful. They might attempt to pressure you into working with them, and they would certainly try to curtail your mobility. Your unique circumstances do help you, given it is very unlikely they could contain you for long. Once they learned that, however, the next step would likely be to eliminate you. You represent too great of a potential upset to the balance of power."

"Great. That's the big reason you want me as incognito as possible. But why would you even let me out of your cave, then? I'm useful to you, immensely so because of the money you can make off me."

"Silly girl." Nax reaches out across the fire pit and pushes my bed with the back of her claw, rocking me a bit. "You are much more valuable as a willing ally than as a controlled resource. Thus it stands to reason that if I can show you what you are up against, while giving you freedom to learn and explore, you become not only a source of things but in time, my agent in your world. I try to treat my employees equitably so long as they do the same for me, and I want you as an employee."

"Not to mention, everything you teach me or arrange to have taught to me makes me more valuable in the long run?" I reply with a raised eyebrow. "You want a partnership. Mentorship. Long term investment."

"Indeed. It is wasteful not exploring a potential to its best simply because it is already good."

---

We pack up shortly after, once she brings out the leather and gem armband and heals my legs up enough for me to (stiffly) walk again. I really like that thing-- I want one. Heals injuries and overworked muscles, but then those are just work-torn muscle fibers, so it makes sense. Still, I find myself needing to reflect on what friendship apparently means to a dragon. It's more transactional than I expected, even though I know at the forefront of my mind that she's [i]not human,[/i] no matter how much she looks like one on occasion. It's mildly concerning how much this doesn't bother me. Father DiMaggio is much more-- generous? --in his friendliness. But I feel like I can relate to Naxylotriam more. 

Perhaps because I can understand her motives better; I can see what my value is to her better than some nebulous wish to do good for good's sake and the favor of an invisible man in the sky. My life experience has long taught me that everyone's got a motive and I still don't really get how the priest's motive works. Nax is explaining to me the general ways of this place, trying to teach me a trade. Warning me of things she's trying to protect me from. Do I entirely trust everything she says? Well, that's tricky. I'm still willing to entertain the possibility that she's buttering me up, or feeding me propaganda of some kind. At the same time not only does what she has to say make sense, but she's also adding too many details about this world that just aren't necessary to push her narrative if it's not at least mostly factual. Did she arrange the meeting with the Goughmor orc? It's certainly possible. She was leading the way the whole time, with me following. But at the same time, she knows this region and I don't, so it's still a natural thing for me to follow her lead. "So where exactly are we headed?" 

"In part, this is experiment. The dweomers tied to your appearing here are convoluted, but there is evidence to suggest that you will arrive in proximity to your last departure. As such, I intend to learn in six days whether you reappear where we are going, or whether you return to my home. While the latter would undoubtedly be safer for you, it would be strikingly inconvenient for me to bring an instructor to assist you, since save for my two most trusted agents nobody knows I am a dragon, much less that I live in the marshes." She keeps evading the question. I don't know how to feel about that but I suppose that might be for the best. In a world with magic, who knows what people could find out or how? I watch as she finishes her last bite of roll, which was also the second to last roll on the table. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by the appetite of a dragon, but still, that was... a LOT of food. 

"What would you like for dinner?" I ask her. "I mean, when we stop tonight." 

She looks back at me, halting just short of the door. "Fish. Shell fish is good too, as well as pickled meats. Also, the shellfish don't need to be shelled; they are crunchy." 

And good with ketchup, I don't comment. "I'll keep that in mind." 

Her head tilts ever so slightly, before she exits the hideaway. I look around the room for a minute or so, before I follow her, after snagging the last roll to eat on the way. 

With the sun at our backs, the march is slightly less unpleasant than it was this morning, the improvements made by the lack of glare and mud counterbalanced by the fact that it's just too hot to be doing any of this. My legs are stiff, and I would do just about anything to not have to walk anymore. "Are you ever going to actually tell me anything concrete about where we're going or should I find something else to fill the silence with?"

"I do not see why the silence needs filling," Nax replies. "It is not a container and we are not trying to carry anything new with us." 

"That's a no, then?" I return. 

She chuckles. "Tell me, when were you born? How long ago? With precision."

I shrug, as we walk past one of the gradually increasing numbers of trees. "You said your calendar here has twelve months, twenty eight days each. Right?"

"Indeed."

I pull out my phone again, frowning at the fortyish percent charge left on it. I call up the calculator app; Naxylotriam slows in her step and looks on with interest. I don't let her distract me, though. "Let's see, my birthday is June twelfth, July, August, October, ninety three days, June and September, another sixty, one fifty three, when I went to sleep back home it was November tenth, minus two, is one hundred fifty one days. You want total days, right? Because our years are different lengths."

"And your months are not uniform, it sounds."

I don't even bring up February. She doesn't know the half. "Yeah. The short version of it is that our orbit around our star is three hundred sixty five and twenty four one hundredths days long. So every four years there's an extra day to account for it." I pause, remembering the exceptions. "Except we skip leap day three out of four centuries on the hundred."

Nax nods. "To compensate for calendar drift. And you are very detail oriented. By my calculations, you were therefore born five thousand, six hundred twenty eight days ago. Also on a Zol, during the month of Rhaan, on the twenty fourth. Or rather, you would have been if we were counting directly backwards from today." She tilts her head. "If the time differential holds true, however, the actual date here when you were born would be one hundred seventeen years and three months exactly to today-- which would be the twenty fourth of Therendor. And in the life of a dragon, just coming into young adulthood, much as you are in human years." 

"Interesting coincidence," I comment. 

"Isn't it? Therendor is typically associated with the mark of healing, while Rhaan is associated with the mark of scribing." 

For a split second I'm confused, before I groan to myself. Astrology. She's talking about local astrology. I'm about to comment, possibly rudely, about what utter nonsense astrology is, before my common sense catches up to me. Namely, that this is a world with literal magic and dragons in it. And I think she mentioned dwarves, before, too. As absurd as the idea sounds, maybe here astrology actually works. Although attempting to categorize people because of the light from stars thousands or millions of light years away is kind of dumb. In the most diplomatic way I can think, I reply, "I've never thought much about astrology. Back home, it's mostly a con to liberate superstitious or gullible people from their money." There. That's a polite, inoffensive way to put it. 

"Odd. The Rings of Syberis especially tell our world of the weave of tomorrow." Hoo boy. "The words of the Prophecy are shaped from many sources. The Progenitors had a plan for this creation of theirs. A path set out for it. The Prophecy had a great deal of regard for you, by my sire's reckoning, enough for him to spend his own life force to link you to this world from your own."

"Last time you mentioned it, you only suspected he was involved. Now you know?"

"One of the things confirmed by careful examination of the residual magic from your last visit; I recorded it quite carefully to show to an agent of mine who is an expert in such matters." 

"How do you record magic?" I ask. 

She pauses, briefly begins rooting around in her bag, then pulls out a finger length shard of pink, translucent crystal. It seems to have threads of some kind of inner light as her almost negligent toss lands perfectly in my hastily cupped hands. "With one of those. Commonly known as dragonshards. That specifically is known as an Eberron dragonshard; the other two types are Syberis dragonshards and Khyber dragonshards. The former tend towards a golden tone, the latter deep blue to black." 

I stare at the pink crystal. One end of it seems vaguely rounded and crusted over with common, ordinary rock, but the rest is all but pure crystal. It's definitely got some glow inside it. "So this is, what, like a magic flash drive?"

"I do not know what a flash drive is." She looks at me with a wry smile, and the way her hair waves to the side from the motion gives me a moment of almost intense envy. I miss my hair. "If it is an artifact for the purposes of storing information, then it is merely one aspect of the use of the Eberron shards. They are among the most versatile of all dragonshards, as well as the most common, and frequently used in many varieties of permanent magic item." 

I look at it again, then lift it up to look through it. The threads almost look like veins, like blood vessels, if instead of blood, light was flowing through them. "So you have to have them for magic items?" 

"They are not mandatory, no," Nax concedes slowly. "But they make crafting difficult magic items easy, and nearly impossible ones merely difficult. As Mistress Nella, I have a minor reputation in the region as a moderately successful dragonshard huntress. The one you have there is a minor shard, good for embedding into a wand, or as an amplifier of sorts for a spell it can be attuned to." 

"Can it amplify a mark?" I ask, still examining it. 

"For that you need something much more potent: a Syberis crystal, rarest of the dragonshards." She looks over her shoulder at me with a smirk. "Unfortunately, those are significantly harder to come by, and vastly more expensive, than what you hold there. Such crystals are coveted for their power to enhance the power of a dragonmark, and-- but that is for another time." 

"Oh, what, did we have something more important to talk about now?" I ask, a little unwisely. 

"Very well. I will regale you with information you have no context for, no understanding of, and little means to remember, so that when it becomes relevant later I can simply say, 'I told you this already.'" 

I don't think I'm THAT airheaded, or airheaded at all, but even forgetting a little bit of what she might have to say because I don't have context to tie it to would be embarassing. "Never mind. I can wait." 

"Are you certain you don't need something to fill the silence?"

"No, I'm good."