Chapter 31: Yesterday ***BONUS CHAPTER * * *
(Thanks to everyone who is reviewing on Royal Road.)
“Andrew, does every move have to have a name?” Gustave asked uncomfortably.
“How else will we know which team attack to use?”
“Couldn’t we wing it?”
“Aaa. I see what you did there,” Andy projected with pride and amusement. “You are catching on. I give you an,” he paused and then said in his best Gustave impression, “acceptable.”
Auri rolled her eyes. “Yeah but Fox News… Really? What is that even supposed to mean?”
“You’re a fox, you’re kind of doing illusions.. It’s a whole thing. Don’t worry about it. Someone will think it’s funny.”
Andy’s horn began resonating.
“Come on pony-boy I thought we were done with the horn singing for today.”
It apparently was not. The green light pulsed in time with the song, Doo-do doo-doo dooooo… do-doo doo doo doooooo”
A woman stepped out of the treeline. She was striking. “Hello Andrew, and Andrew’s herd. I am Georgina.” She was tall, with silver-white hair that fell past her shoulders in a sheet of waves that Andy recognized because it was the same color as his own mane, the color of moonlight. Her eyes were golden: pure, metallic and ancient. And on her forehead was a horn of spiraling opalescence. Milky white with pinks, teals and greens playing along the surface.
She had a horn… She had a humanoid form and a horn. These two facts arrived in Andy’s consciousness and his already battered brain took the news as if he’d gotten hit by a train.
This was a unicorn.
Andy’s horn reacted while his brain was playing catch up. The emerald glow intensified and the song grew louder. His horn had gotten excited about a lot of things over his six tiers, but this was the first time it had gotten excited over meeting another horn.
She looked at him, her gold eyes assessing him from hoof to horn. She kept it professional, eyes lingering only the way a doctor might: hooves the right shape, appears to be in-shape, never misses leg day, horn in the right spot, probably larger than average.
She met his gaze and held it. Andy suspected it was a test, but even if he wanted to, he couldn’t look away. This was a unicorn standing in front of him. Everything he’d dreamt of being and here she was. She already existed.
She spoke. Her voice was melodic and controlled. “Your energy is…” she began, and Andy’s eyes moved over to Auri without moving his head. She shrugged. He trained his eyes back onto Georgina. “Unusual.”
“That seems to be the story of my life. Unusual, weird, unprecedented."
“What is your herd lineage?”
He thought for a moment before responding. “I don’t know what that is, although if it’s a pedigree, I don’t have one. I chose to become a unicorn.”
“You… chose.”
“I’m self-made. This is my herd, and I am the beginning of my lineage.”
Something about her made Andy want to tell her everything. (That. And Andy genuinely enjoyed telling his story. He’d been writing it in his head for quite some time afterall.)
“You might as well sit down, this is going to take awhile.” Auri and Gustave both groaned half-heartedly as Andy began his story. “I was a 24-year old vet-tech and I’d made sure, absolutely positive that the condom had been in my left pocket, because I had just received a text from Megan…”
“…And then in a turn of events no one possibly could have seen coming, Veronica was a turncoat.”
“Wow… That’s a lot. You seem to be in relatively good spirits about the whole Veronica thing though.”
“Well, I’m doing my best to push it down. Way way way down. For now we have a lord to prepare for.”
“Andrew, there is something that has been going on that you’re not aware of. A millenia ago this world was filled with Sophonts. Humans, specifically, were relegated to small villages and were mostly ignored. Humanity cannot possess magic. Humanity cannot interface with the System, as you call it. Until there was a human who bonded through a ritual with a dragon.”
“First, what is a Sophont?” Andy asked.
“A sophont is any being that possesses metacognition–they can think about their own thinking.”
“Oh, I see. Interesting. Second…dragons are real?”
“Yes, and far more common in those times. Anyway, this human became known as a conduit. Because of this bond the human was able to access the magic possessed by the dragon. They were able to learn how to control it, and yield it. The dragon and the human existed peacefully for some time, but the other Sophonts shunned them, and humanity was afraid of them. The human was unable to handle the rejection from everyone around them and lashed out at the only one nearby, the dragon.”
“Dragons, by nature, are rather solitary beasts and so he left to cool off, to avoid escalating the issue.”
“How long did he leave for? A couple of days?”
“Two hundred years.”
“Two hundred years!?”
“He left and slumbered for two hundred years. Humans are short-lived. Magic does not assist in their growth and so it is imperfect, and being such they often pass before half a century has come and gone. The conduit, being filled with the dragon’s magic and lifeforce, did not pass. Instead, she lived isolated and grew angrier and angrier.”
“Madam Tempest grew more and more powerful as the dragon slept. They shared a magic pool and if he was asleep, he wasn’t using his magic, and so he lost more and more of it. She began developing runes to house and absorb ambient magic from plants and animals.”
“Uh oh.”
“Quite so. After decades of being alone Tempest returned to the humans, she claimed she could give them magic weapons to level the playing field. All she asked in return was companionship. Warriors of humanities tribes were sent out as assassins to usurp power from each of the leaders of the mythic counsel where she was shunned. She gave them every piece of information that a human may need to sneak in undetected and unsuspected to complete her task. In this she was wildly successful. Seventeen of the Twenty leaders of the mythic counsel were slain. In many cases so were their second in command. A war began. As it waged the runes from the weapons, vehicles, and even cities sucked whole continents dry. Magical creatures are very long lived in comparison and so repopulating takes a lot longer than it does for humans.”
“By the time the dragon woke back up the world had changed. Sophonts were now the ones pushed to the corners of the world. We developed glamours, ways to hide ourselves, our civilizations but the damage had been done. Many areas became too dried of magic to power the runes and after several generations they too became nothing more than a myth. Now eight hundred years have passed and magic is beginning to return to the world. We cannot let this happen a second time.”
“That’s a lot.“
“The reason I share this with you, is that…” she paused, unsure of how to word it, “It would seem, dear, that someone attempted this bonding ritual with you.”
Andy blinked.
“The ritual involves blood sharing, a deep connection, and a sacred vow. As long as the vow is kept the bonded pair share a life-force and a magic pool. If one of you is injured, the other feels it.”
Auri spoke up for the first time since Georgina began her tale. “I have heard this tale before, it is one of caution. I thought it was a fairy story, warning Sophonts from getting involved with humans.”
“It is a tale of caution, but it is also very real.”
“What happened to the conduit?”
“She lives still.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because the dragon lives. A conduit and her bonded partner live together and die together.”
They all sat in silence taking in the gravity of the situation.
“So, someone bonded with me?” Andy finally found his voice.
“The ritual was completed, but as you are not yet a mythic beast it is weak.” Georgina explained calmly.
“Can we fix it?”
“If we sever the bond before your final evolution.”
“How do we sever it?”
“The vow taken is that you would not willingly cause physical harm to the other. If you can get her to hurt you on purpose the bond will sever and you will be free.”
“And Veronica?”
“Will be fine. She may have some lingering of your magic, but it will probably work its way out of her system.”
“Probably?”
“Well, you are unprecedented after all, are you not?”
Andy attempted to be amused, but the whole thing was just too much. First he finds out Veronica was being paid to find him, then he finds out there are more unicorns, then the tale of Madam Tempest, and to top it all off not only was Veronica being paid to find and train him, she also was stealing his magic and lifeforce? She bonded to him without his permission? Prior to today, if she had asked it would have been no small stretch of the imagination that he willingly would have bonded to her. But to do so without his permission was vile.
“Okay, so let’s break this bond.”