The Ballad Of A Semi-Benevolent Dragon

Interlude 4: The Monsters Under The Bed

"I think there are monsters under my bed," Hikari said gravely.

"Is that so?" Doomwing found it amusing indeed that one of her preferred activities was to go fishing... on top of his snout when he was napping or lazing about in the lake. Due to his immense size, finding a good place to lay down was not always easy.

"Yes." Hikari nodded. She had a basket beside her. She had only caught one fish so far, but it wouldn't be long before she added more. Knowing her, she'd keep enough for herself and her parents before giving the rest away to the staff who served her family. "There are definitely monsters under my bed."

"You do realise that the palace is heavily warded, especially your family's chambers. And even if a monster somehow managed to sneak in, it would have to contend with the royal guard and your parents."

The royal guard were powerful by human standards, and Elerion was stronger than all of them put together. However, Kagami was the proverbial elephant in the room. A nine-tailed kitsune was a foe that even most dragons would have to take seriously. Marcus was usually around as well, and the ancient vampire was no slouch, especially since his skillset was almost perfect for dealing with assassins and their ilk.

"I know... but what if they use super powerful teleportation magic and can get past all of the guards and stuff." Hikari lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I think the monsters have a teleportation anchor under my bed."

Doomwing made a mental note to be more careful about what sort of magic he spoke about around Hikari. Teleportation was certainly possible although it was rarely used in combat. It simply required too much time and power to be efficient. Long-range teleportation was likewise rarely used due to the nightmarish cost and mental strain involved. That wasn't to say there weren't people who used it. Dragons belonging to the rift dragon lineage were particularly adept at manipulating space and time, so they were able to avoid most of the downsides associated with teleportation. Doomwing's mother had belonged to that lineage. However, he had not inherited any particular proficiency in that area. Nevertheless, he had studied teleportation thoroughly. There were ways to reduce the time needed to cast a teleportation spell although the costs were steep enough that they were really only viable in emergencies.

"To do that, they would already have had to sneak in. Not to mention, the wards around the castle would definitely detect teleportation."

"I guess..." Hikari made a face. "Could you make a construct and put it under my bed? That way if there are any monsters, you can get them."

"..." Doomwing considered refusing before deciding that it might actually be easier to just go along with it. "Fine." Besides, Hikari had good instincts. He doubted there were actually monsters under the bed, but there might well be something odd that needed to be dealt with, perhaps a disloyal servant passing on information to one of the factions in Elerion's court.

Kagami stared at the other kitsune and just barely managed to keep from ripping the other woman limb from limb. Behind her, her tails stirred restlessly, motes of emerald light flickering in and out of existence as a multitude of half-formed spells trembled in the air. Elerion was taking Hikari on another jaunt through the marketplace, which was quite fortunate. It would be a shame if her lover or their daughter had to deal with this... mess.

"Please!" the kitsune cried, flinging herself at the ground. "Spare me!"

Doomwing's construct ignored the wailing fox woman. "I caught her sneaking into Hikari's room. I believe she used a combination of shadow walking and dream walking to penetrate the castle's defences."

"That could work," Kagami conceded. Shadow walking allowed someone to travel through shadows, and dream walking could be used to move between the physical world and the dreaming lands. Although the castle had formidable magical defences, they had been constructed mostly by humans with Kagami adding a few defences of her own. Defences of the kind she employed around her residence in the realm of the kitsune simply weren't possible given the materials and the political situation Elerion had to manage. Even so, the defences they had in place should have been enough. "Especially if they knew what sort of defences were in place."

The construct considered the matter for a moment. "The culprit is a kitsune. Treachery is clearly involved."

"You knew about the palace's defences, didn't you?" Kagami directed her question to the cowering kitsune. "Speak." The kitsune remained silent, and Kagami snarled. "Speak!" There was magic behind the command this time, and the other woman's nose began to bleed as she tried to fight off the compulsion. Kagami's eyes glowed emerald, and her tails went taut. "You will speak."

The other kitsune began to speak.

Once Kagami was confident that she had learned everything she could, she used a flick of her wrist and a spell to decapitate the other kitsune. She flopped onto the ground, and Kagami used magic to capture the blood that spilled across the ground before using another spell to destroy the body.

"Was that necessary?" Doomwing's construct asked. "She might have had value as a prisoner."

"She was a deniable and disposable asset, nothing more. Keeping her alive would have served no purpose, especially since she was deliberately kept in the dark about anything beyond her objective, or so she believes. Besides, I collected her blood. I can give it to Marcus. He will be able to peer into her memories, and she doesn't need to be alive for him to do that." Kagami's voice was calm, eerily so, despite the rage boiling within her. "I did not expect my enemies amongst my people to get into contact with my enemies amongst Elerion's people."

"You could argue that they're being quite hypocritical, working with kitsune when one of the main reasons certain factions in Elerion's court dislike you is because you are a kitsune."

"I wouldn't trust me either if I was in their position," Kagami conceded. "But I would also not be planning to kidnap a child either." Her brows furrowed. "How did she get into Hikari's room? I warded that room myself. I should have been alerted if someone entered it uninvited. She didn't seem to understand how that was accomplished only that it would be possible for her."

"Hikari was right. There was something under her bed. It wasn't a teleportation anchor. It was a device that created a shadow tunnel through the defences around the room. That was how that kitsune entered without triggering the room's defences. It was remarkably well concealed."

Kagami's eyes narrowed into slits. "How was the device smuggled into the room? I interrogated her, but even she didn't know how that was accomplished."

"It was buried in the floor beneath Hikari's bed. I believe it was placed their during construction of the palace."

Kagami's blood went ice cold. "That long? They've been planning this for that long?"

"It would seem so."

"Doomwing," Kagami said. "I..."

"I will scan the palace," the construct said. "I doubt that anything will be able to evade detection in the face of multiple ancient runes. I will also shore up the palace's defences myself. There will be no repeats of this incident."

"I will have to speak to Elerion. The staff will need to be investigated... and I will have to deal with matters in my own court. Dreamsong has been in the very deepest parts of the deep dreaming for the past several months. That is likely why they made their move. It would have been impossible for them to act without her noticing otherwise."

"Do what you must," the construct said. "I will remain until the situation has been dealt with."

Kagami nodded. "You have my thanks." She paused. "If the worst should happen..."

"Dreamsong will take her in. You know that. But if, for some reason, that is no longer viable, I will handle it."

Marcus sighed. He didn't mind a bit of bloodshed. He was a vampire. But Kagami might have been going a little over the top. Yes, her enemies had made the mistake of targeting Hikari, so he wasn't exactly going to shed any tears for them. However, there was a difference between killing people and slaughtering them. And this was definitely a case of the latter, not the former.

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The pagoda was home to a particular group of kitsune who were against kitsune having children with people who weren't also kitsune. Marcus had always found that idea a bit strange since kitsune genetics weren't like human genetics. There were no half-blood kitsune, not in the way most people meant the term. Instead, children either expressed their kitsune heritage fully or not at all. Hikari might have been half human by parentage, but she might as well have been completely kitsune if the way her blood felt to him was anything to go by.

This particular group had been quite outspoken in their views, and they had taken particular issue with Hikari since Kagami seemed to favour her so much. They likely feared that Kagami would pass over her full-blooded kitsune children in favour of HIkari, but Marcus found that difficult to believe. It wasn't a case of Kagami loving Hikari more than her older children. Rather, her older children were centuries, even millennia, old. They neither wanted nor needed her babying them. In contrast, Hikari was still a child. Of course, Kagami was going to dote over her.

When Kagami had turned up and demanded to speak with the elders who ruled over the group, they had refused. That alone was insulting. Kagami ruled over the kitsune. To refuse her like that suggested they already knew how much trouble they were in. Oh, they'd covered their tracks well, but Marcus was an ancient vampire. It was possible for a skilled and powerful kitsune to seal memories and thoughts away from even Kagami, but as long as he could get enough of someone's blood, it was almost impossible for them to stop him.

Under Kagami's supervision he had drunk his way up the metaphorical food chain, going from the would be assassin/kidnapper to her handler and so on until he'd been able to secure proof that the group in the pagoda was responsible. Kagami had then immediately moved to confront them, not even waiting for her personal retainers. Instead, she had left immediately, leaving her retainers scrambling to assemble with only Marcus at her side. To their credit, her retainers should be here soon, but it would already be over then, if Kagami's present pace was anything to go by.

Upon being refused, Kagami had immediately attacked the pagoda. Kitsune were masters of trickery, deception, illusions, and mental interference. Few of them were experts in the sort of bloody, visceral combat that Marcus had cut his teeth on. But Kagami was. She was older than all of the people in the pagoda, old enough to remember when the kitsune had been forced to flee in the aftermath of the Fifth Catastrophe, and she had fought a bloody war of succession when her siblings had tried to usurp her after her mother's death. These kitsune had enjoyed lives of relative peace thanks to the strength of Kagami's rule and the lack of outside threats.

Evidently, they had forgotten just how Kagami had secured her leadership, and they had confused her often easy-going nature with weakness.

He doubted they would make that mistake again. Ever. Since most of them were dead or in the process of dying.

Kagami had torn her way up through the pagoda, leaving mostly carnage in her wake. Those who had the intelligence to surrender were given the chance to lay down their arms, and Marcus had used magic to restrain them. Those who chose to fight died. Horribly. Something most people forgot was that a kitsune's tails were prehensile. Kagami was excellent with a spear, and she had nine tails. Yeah. A woman with a spear who could wield up to nine other weapons while using illusions and mind control to completely confuse her opponents was an enemy that none of the pagoda's defenders were ready to face.

And now they were at the top of the pagoda where the leaders of the group were busy begging for their lives. Honestly, Marcus wouldn't have spared them. He would have dragged them off to endure a quick trial where all of their misdeeds were aired for the public to see before having them executed as a warning to anyone else thinking of trying to do the same thing.

Kagami had decided to skip straight to the execution part.

It was honestly a little worrying to see, but Marcus could understand. This sort of treachery had to be torn out root and branch. it could not be allowed to fester, and people could not be allowed to think it was tolerable. Moreover, what the elders had planned for Hikari was the sort of thing that would drive any parent to violence. They hadn't planned on killing her. Instead, the plan was to kidnap her and then ransom her back to Kagami in exchange for various concessions. However, that wasn't their true objective. Instead, they had planned to use the time Hikari was in their hands to implant certain mental compulsions that would allow them to control her and turn her against Kagami.

Kagami was too powerful for them to confront directly. But would she be able to defend herself from an assassination attempt that came from her beloved youngest child?

It was sickening, but Marcus could see the ruthless logic in it too. Kagami truly loved her children. She would absolutely hesitate if Hikari tried to assassinate her, and with the right preparation and equipment, that could prove fatal. It wouldn't be any time soon, of course. It would take a while for Hikari to have the strength to pose any sort of threat to Kagami. They might even have to wait centuries, but they could afford to wait. They were kitsune.

And now the leaders of the group were all dead, save for the most senior members who were likely only being spared for further interrogation and then extremely public execution. Florid starbursts of blood stained the walls, floor, and ceiling, and Kagami's normally pristine robes were drenched. She could easily have used magic to clean them or keep them from being dirtied in the first place, but she had been too enraged to care.

As the cowering survivors were taken away by Kagami's retainers who had finally arrived, Marcus looked for a place to sit that wasn't covered in blood before realising there really wasn't anywhere available. Instead, he continued to stand, glad that he'd been standing back far enough to avoid the worst of the mess. It wasn't as though Kagami had really needed his help.

"Feeling better?" Marcus asked.

"No." Kagami had put her swords away, but her spear was still gripped tightly in her hands. It was a masterpiece, forged by dwarves in the Third Age and handed down through her family. According to Doomwing, it had been made by one of the legends of that Age, a dwarf whose skills had been considered truly exceptional even amongst dwarves. Supposedly, the dwarves of the Sixth Age no longer possessed the skills to make such weapons, and Kagami had been offered an obscene amount of wealth for it by the dwarf kings of the Sky Claw Mountains. She had refused, of course. "Not really."

"Well, you certainly looked like you were enjoying yourself."

"They got what they deserved." She snarled. "They were not there when I had to fight my siblings for my birthright. They would have mired us in bloodshed until there was nothing left of us but dwindling memories in the dreaming lands. They were not there when our numbers were so few that many of us had to look elsewhere for people to have children with. They were not there when those same children proved themselves, giving their lives to help fend off the horrors of the deep dreaming or risking everything to leave our realm and bring back much-needed supplies when Dreamsong entered seclusion. A kitsune cannot choose how pure their blood is, for no child can choose its parents. What matters are actions, and their actions have shown them for who they truly are... traitors. And to think they would even use my own daughter against me..."

"There will always be people like them," Marcus said. "The trick is dealing with them before they get out of hand."

"Yes. There have always been people like them," Kagami said. "But maybe there shouldn't be."

Marcus sighed. "Come on. Let's get you cleaned up. You're going to have to make a statement about this, and I doubt you want to do that covered in blood."

"Perhaps it would be more effective," Kagami drawled. "As a reminder that there are lines that shouldn't be crossed."

"At least wring out your clothes and hair. You're dripping blood everywhere."