We appeared right by the pool and I tumbled on the cushions. I was so frustrated with Jena but at the same time I was so relieved to be back in the lair. It was only in that moment that I realized how tense I had been and it wasn’t just because of the capture episode. The atmosphere outside had been oppressive. It was like having a blocked nose, only when its unblocked that you realized how unbearable it was. Not too bad to fuss about but annoying enough. I was glad to be back but there was no way I was admitting that to Jena, yet.

  I sat up and looked around for Jena. He had scampered away and was now standing, staring at me from the other side of the pool. He didn’t say anything, just blinked owlishly.

  “Okay, talk to me. What’s going on?” I said calmly, folding my hands. His multicolored eyes were so cute, and for the past six weeks he had been my only friend. I had to remind myself, firmly, that he was an adult. One who was hundreds of years older than me. He wasn’t a child. He knew exactly what he was doing. And this, whatever this was, had to stop.

  I don’t know if I was this sober minded because of what I had experienced in the outside world or I was really growing emotionally stable. Either way, it was a good thing. Blowing up at him won’t solve a thing and this situation needed to be resolved. Jena was my anchor and I his.

  “You tell me.” He said, “I left you with instructions to hunt and then you disappear for half a day, only to come became with a warrior and a mage. Are you their prisoner?” He narrowed his eyes at me.

  “Seriously, did I look like I was in distress when you found me?” He had to be deflating because really, he can’t be this clueless. But then he did tell me that he needed to connect to me to understand –connect to?– human emotions. Maybe this was part of that, helping him relate to me.

  I stood and walked to the kitchen more as an excuse to think than anything. Whatever I say to Jena, I need to say it clearly. Suddenly, I was starving. With everything that had happened, I hadn’t eaten since waking up, not even breakfast.

  I started preparing something to eat. Breakfast or was it lunch by now? I considered asking Jena what time it was, then decided against it. That was something else we needed to talk about—another thing he’d kept from me.

  “Looks can be deceiving. Look at me.” I turned back to look at him. He was pointed to his face –fair point. He looked like a cute baby dragon but he was neither a baby or cute.

  I sighed. “I sort of found them when I went wandering instead of hunting. We’re… friends. Sort of.” Then I explained how we had met. Jena didn’t look convinced. “You may not think they’re my friends,” I continued, “but right now, they’re the only people who can help us achieve our goal. He’s already taught me how to activate my core. And since I left this morning, I’ve gained three Mental XP.” That got his attention.

  “Show me,” he asked quietly.

  Our bond was an interesting one, although I had been bonded to him since I arrived, I still didn’t fully understand it. I was still learning. One advantage, our bond afforded us, was that we could communicate telepathically. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a true mind-reading bond. We couldn’t simply hear each other’s thoughts hence the need for the current discussion. If I wanted him to know something, I had to deliberately send the thought to him. The same was true in reverse, though receiving was usually easier.

  One thing I could share freely and easily, however, was my system information.

  Base Attributes:

  Strength: 4

  Dexterity:4

  Constitution:4

  Intelligence: 7

  Wisdom: 7

  Charisma:7

  “Amazing!” His voice boomed with excitement. I doubted I would ever get used to how completely his appearance and voice didn’t match – cute face with a deep, ancient rumble. “This changes nothing. I still don’t like him but we can use him.”

  Of course, he’d think like that. I sighed internally. Apparently, I still had more to teach Jena about human decency. Not for the first time, I wondered what his relationship with the other mage had really been like? So far I haven’t managed to learn anything of importance. I had been too preoccupied with getting stronger. All I knew is Jena, the dragon, wanted to save Nyajena but I couldn’t work out why? Was it because of whatever bond he’d shared with his deceased mage?

  I picked up my plate of brunch and motioned for Jena to follow me to the sitting area. I hoped Matemai and his warriors were patient, because this conversation was going to take a while.

  “He’s already offered.” I said to Jena as I sat down on a cushion. “Which is why I am back. He wants to really wants to help. But first we need to talk about this morning.” I felt myself relax. This was home. I wasn’t sure when that had happened. Somehow, over the past six weeks, I had come to accept this place as my own – not just some place in a magical world but my place, somewhere I could completely relax. Which meant I had completely accepted Jena too. This world was changing me.

  “What about this morning?” His eyes twitched. I knew that twitch, he was getting defensive. He knew he’d done something wrong, even if he didn’t quite know what yet, and he was already preparing to bluff his way out of it. I smiled inwardly. That’s my Jena.

  “You skipped training,” he said, “but it’s okay. You made up for it.” He grinned.

  “Jena, you made me kill a hyena!”

  “No, I didn’t! I told you not to hurt it. I specifically remember telling you to capture it without harming it. I mean… your strength is only at 4, but you’re still way too powerful. Its very easy for you to break bones without meaning to. Just look at what happened with the hyena. I want you to learn to control that strength. That’s what this morning’s training exercise was supposed to help you with.”

  “I’m not questioning the exercise. Okay, I will question it later, but that’s not the issue right now. The issue is that you didn’t discuss any of this with me, Jena. You just took me into the forest, pointed, and then left me there.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “No, I pointed and told you what to do then left” He looked at me with a whats-wrong-with-you look. I wiped my face in frustration. Was he being deliberately obtuse?

  “The point I’m trying to make is that I’m not a baby—or a slave—for you to direct without talking things through. We’re partners. Companions. I may not always know what to do, but I need the chance to think things through for myself.”

  “But why is that bothering you now. I have been training you without explaining why we did every single physical exercise.”

  “I understood what you were doing before, that is why I didn’t object to the exercises. But this morning’s training—you arranged it without preparing me or even asking what I wanted. My feelings about things that affect me, matter. The affect how I behave. It’s a human thing.

  Take the hyena, for example. I come from a world where slaughtering animals is done by trained professionals. I’ve never killed an animal before, and I never planned to start now. But because I wasn’t prepared… I killed one by accident. And I’m very unhappy about that.”

  I shuddered at the memory. Even though it wasn’t intentional, it still made me deeply uncomfortable. “You know I don’t want to go into combat… so maybe that’s why you did it without asking?”

  “Now you’re being silly. It’s because I know that that I planned this morning’s exercise. You need to learn how to incapacitate someone without causing permanent harm—or worse, death.”

  I could sense that Jena truly believed what he was saying.

  “That is were we differ. I don’t want to fight at all. I want to be healthy and strong but not combat ready.”

  “Explain that to me. Because I can’t see how you will survive here if you can’t physically defend yourself.”

  “Look Jena,” I put my plate away and turned to face Jena. This was important. I had to make Jena see reason otherwise the hyena incident will keep happening.

  “If I ever have to physically fight a sentient being, then I’ve already lost. Maybe I will survive the encounter, maybe I will even win that particular fight… but it won’t truly be over. They’ll remember. They’ll recover. And one day, they’ll come back for me. Violence against thinking, feeling beings doesn’t end problems, it plants them. It creates enemies, grudges, consequences that don’t just disappear. So what’s the point of preparing for that as if it isn’t the solution? Sharpening a useless tool doesn’t make it useful. It just makes it more dangerous to hold. Look at it this way, if Jena hadn’t known how to kill… maybe he would have been forced to find a different answer. Another path. One that didn’t begin and end with destruction.” I was afraid I had gone too far but I was more afraid of my relationship with Jena fraying. He were bond for life, at least my life.

  Jena was quiet for a long time. I could see he was taking this seriously and really struggling with it. For a creature bloodthirsty by nature, killing came easily. But Jena wasn’t just bloodthirsty… he was also immensely powerful, and forbidden to kill.

  Whatever the system had intended, it had created the opposite of what it wanted. Instead of shaping a powerful but peaceful being, it had produced a bloodthirsty one who felt constantly restrained, always searching for ways to get around those limits.And Jena’s mage had helped that along, if I was reading the situation correctly.

  The proverbial light bulb went on in my head. That’s why I was summoned. The system needed someone like me—an old woman with nothing to prove and a deep dislike of violence. Someone who didn’t want power, didn’t enjoy conflict, and had no interest in politics. Oh, Jena, the system had pulled a fast one on him.I was starting to understand his frustration now. Not enough to let him walk all over me—but enough to make me want to help him understand my point of view.What the system didn’t quite understand yet was that I wasn’t anyone’s pawn. I had made my own way in my old world, and I would do the same here.But even as I settled on that resolve, doubt crept in. How much of this was truly my own thinking… and how much came from whatever had altered my emotions?Or worse—was the system counting on me being exactly this stubborn? Argh! I can’t win.

  “I see what you mean,” He finally said in a low growl, “ but the fact remains—you need to learn to control your power. That’s what this morning was about.” He still didn’t get it.

  “Jena, we’re bound for life. That means we have to respect each other and treat each other fairly. Whether this morning’s training was necessary is something we can debate later—and probably at length. What I object to is being treated like a child. You didn’t tell me you could take me outside, and when you finally did, you didn’t even ask if I wanted to go. Then you made it worse by throwing me into an exercise I knew nothing about. Can you see how that could become a problem in the future? How would you have reacted if I had treated you the same way? Right now you are miffed because I went off without telling you.”

  “Oh… ah… oh.” Finally, I was getting through to him. Then he said sheepishly,“It’s just that… with my old mage, he trusted me to act in his best interest. I just assumed… that you trusted me too.” Of all the things in the world! Where had he learned that? I hadn’t expected it—but apparently, even emotionless dragons knew how to guilt-trip.

  “Jena, how long were you with him? I mean your old mage, that is.”

  “More than half of his life. We bonded when he was a only a boy.” Not very helpful for an old being, for all I know "a boy" could be anything to a baby to a grandfather. Time meant very little to dragons. He didn’t know when his mage had died, or even how old he’d been then. But considering how long people lived here, the mage must have been over a hundred… maybe two when he died. It was impossible to say. And once again, I found myself wondering what their relationship had truly been like. This was the first real glimpse I’d managed to catch.

  “And how long have we known each other?” I lifted an eyebrow at him. And get it. I wasn’t a teenager he could groom or lead by the nose. “You see where the problem is? You don’t know me well enough to understand how I think—let alone decide what’s good for me. Jena, I am me, not your old mage. I see the world differently from both of you.”

  “Okay, Anesu. I see what you are saying even though I don’t understand the logic. I have far more experience in this world.”

  “Very true—but for the sake of our partnership, this is the one thing I won’t compromise on. I didn’t have any choice in coming here, but I still have the freedom to choose what I do here. Please don’t take that away from me.”

  “I see. I know you feel strongly about anything that takes away your freedom… I just didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have decided for you.”

  I heard the words, and I knew he meant them. But I also knew he was an ancient, powerful, bloodthirsty creature—and ancient beings rarely change easily. I would have to hold him accountable until he has truly learned. That was the only way this was going to work.

  Ding!

  You have recognized the truth behind your summoning.

  Your awareness has gained plus 4.

  Awareness is now 7/10.

  Self-perception and external pattern recognition enhanced.

  Your perception of non-physical presence, influence and movement. Your perception of unseen interaction with the world has been refined.

  Congratulations!

  Plus 3 mental XP.

  Do you want to spend your XP?