A crag in the mountain becomes a rough-hewn tunnel. Caged sconces with electric lights pit the granite walls. The cords which feed them power snake along the ceiling. Wooden floorboards smooth out the rugged path below their feet.
As tributaries split from their passage, their goblin escorts lead them down turns and junctions, pausing at times to let other groups through and exchange rapid-fire Kyssaki.
Thekla’s ears twitch as she strains to listen. “I think we’re in an honest-to-god ambassador warren,” she whispers to Dee. “The outskirts of the deep tunnels where they allow outsiders. We’re over the ecumenopolis.”
“Exciting.” Dee eyes the long guns hanging from the shoulders of a passing patrol. “Long as they stay neighborly.”
They emerge from the close hallways into a pool of amber light, cast by the flickering glow of a bed of candles. The chamber sinks into an upholstered and cushioned conversation pit, its floor misty with blue waterpipe smoke. Two dozen or more goblins of all ages lounge on overstuffed benches and within fur-lined nooks. The sibilant esses and popping k’s of their Kyssaki conversations ebb and flow over the spidery strains of a recorded oud.
One denizen of this hall is twice the height of all the others. As she sits up from her chaise, a thick, crocodilian tail unwraps from around her bangled legs.
Connatraiax of the Southern Zephyr stands. A breezy tunic hangs off her shoulder. Credit here to the dragoness. She’s not pretending to be anything but what she is. Her body is that of a tall and shapely human, but she’s kept her red dragon coloration, the cream belly and throat and the scarlet hide surrounding it. Ramlike horns curling up from her scarlet bob. Her violet eyes have a slitted reptilian pupil.
She bows. “Student.”
Sion bows back. “Madame Teacher.”
Conna looks up at the rest of them. A spark of mischief lights across her. She spreads her arms. “Legendary. Bring it the fuck in right now.”
Kell’s face is a war between trepidation and excitement. Thekla’s shoulders bunch in uncertainty.
Conna’s smile falters. Then Evan steps forward and folds her into a hug. “Hey, Con.”
Her laugh is as light and scintillating as a wind chime. “Hi, Evan H.”
“It’s K now, girl!” Kell bum rushes the embrace and turns it into a huddling group hug. “The wedding was last year. We got so much shit to catch you up on.”
“Okay. We’re doing this. We’re hugging the red dragon.” Thekla squeezes into the pile. “Hi, Conna.”
“Thekla.” Conna beams down at her. “Bitch, you are even hotter than I remember you being.”
The red dragon’s charm offensive is encountering choppy waters on Thekla’s beachhead. “Thanks. You’re, uh. Less feathery.”
“Gotta mix it up sometimes, right? Anise! I see you over there, babe. Come here.”
Anise and Dee exchange a look. The elf awkwardly holds the outside of the huddle. “Conna. We really—thank you so much for the invitation.”
“Of course, Ani.” Conna steps back from everyone. “I owe you guys a lot of explanation. You’ll have it.”
“Let’s start with them.” Dee points at the goblins. She’s never heard of a goblin clan being controlled like an orcish pack, but her hackles are up.
“You’re Dee, right?” Conna gives her a patient smile. “And that’s Nick.”
“Uh huh.” Dee meets her T-Rex eyes. “What’s the deal with your minions here?”
“My minions.” Conna smirks. “Is that what you call your pack? Minions for hire?”
“So you’re paying them?”
“Of course I am. The Kamiyon clan is being extremely generous with their rates, but—”
“Wait.” Thekla squints. “Kamiyon? These are Kamiyons?”
The goblin rifleman looks over from the perch he’s taken on a quilted bench. “Hei,” he says. “Neskainaiza waizei Kamiyonaia.”
“That’s right.” Conna’s voice is soft and sweet. “I loved every Kamiyon I met on Earth. When I came home, I knew who to turn to.”
Thekla’s lip wobbles. “Weianenai Thekla Kamiyon.”
The goblin stumbles to his feet. “Kamiyon?”
“Hei. Nai nekasi Evan nai Kell Kamiyon. Uh—hold on—” Thekla pulls her jacket off, and peels the thermal long-sleeve underneath up above her shoulders. She exposes her back, and the tattoo that covers it. The crest of the Kamiyon clan.
A ripple of shocked exclamations and whispers from the goblins in the chamber. They scramble around Thekla, peering over each other to get a look at her back piece, hissing excitedly to one another. Thekla’s chittering with them in Kyssaki, her voice choked with emotion. Anise is inexpert at goblintongue but she makes out a lot of sskveska. That’s sister.
“Evan, Kell. Get over here.” Thekla wears a huge, trembling smile. Her eyes are damp. “Meet the in-laws.”
Evan kneels before the goblins. “Vaisevazi, Kamiyonaia.” That gets an oooh from the assembly, and he chuckles as they gather around him.
“Zaskainak Evan nai Kell sozikei husband nai wife nekasi.” Thekla’s pulled her shirt back on and is showing off her ring. A burst of delighted chatter from the observing Kamiyons. Kell giggles as a goblin pup climbs up her shoulder and stares at the gauges in her ears.
“They want to show us the warren.” Thekla is trying not to cry as she translates for a bangled he-goblin’s gravely formal pronouncement. “They say, uh.” She swallows her emotion back down. “They say it’s our home, too.”
“Evan and Kell are gonna want—there we go.” Conna gestures to a pair of goblins who are unzipping a canvas bag full of helmets and pads. “Might need to get ready for some crawling.”
“I’d crawl a hundred fuckin’ miles for this.” Kell peers into the bag as a stray pup hangs off her bicep. Evan tests a helmet on his head and puts it aside for the next size down.
Anise steps up to Conna’s scaly hip. “Conna, this is—you planned this, didn’t you?”
Conna glances over. “I did,” she says. “They really are lovely people. I told them more or less what I’m going to tell you and they took me in the same day. But yes.” She turns to where Nick and Dee stand, close behind their lover. “Last time we hung out, I used Legendary and lied to you. And I wanted us to start off on better terms. This is calculated.”
She looks back at the knot of Kamiyons. A weeping she-goblin matron is stroking Thekla’s hair. “Does that negate the good?” she asks, and it sounds sincere, her question, not rhetorical.
Dee will not let herself be moved. That’s not the job she’s here to do.
“Well, anyway.” Conna’s tail swishes. “How about we let the Kamiyons take a quick tour and then we talk some business. And maybe if we finish early, dinner can just be a nice normal dinner.” She sifts through a beaded curtain, deeper into the mountain. “Your girlfriend can bring her bazooka.”
“It’s not a bazooka,” Dee mutters to Nick as she mantles her gun. He gives her an encouraging pat on the butt.
* * *
“So. Do you want the long version, or the short version?” Conna leans across the mahogany feast hall table. Her tunic is loose and gauzy across her ample chest. Dee is feeling annoyed and uncharitable. Why would a lizard have titties? Nothing about this woman is genuine.
Anise adjusts the saffron cushion on her ornate chair. “I think the long.”
“Okay. Well, I was born about three hundred fifty years ago, in the spring. ‘Twas an overcast day, my mother told me, one of the last cold leftovers from winter. My earliest memory—”
Anise shoots her a warning look. “Conna.”
“I’m kidding.” Conna titters. “Not about the three hundred years thing, I’m mad old. Anyway, like most dragons, I trace my lineage to the Elfheim brood. I think my technical royal title is something like Marchioness of Kamhall and Countess of Rekapi. Not that I’ve ever even been to either of those places. By the time I was an adult, the dracopact had been signed, and we all lived in Elfheim. And the tyrants were already getting called tyrants. Like as a pejorative.”
“Conna, does this bit have anything to do with why you opened the Door? Because that’s what I’m supposed to be asking about.”
“Sort of,” Conna says. “I’m telling you about the first time. The crossover, and why it happened.” She waves to her apprentice. “Sion, can you—”
“Of course, teacher.” Sion gives a brief bow at the waist and leaves the room. Dee has never seen the ash elf anywhere close to this deferential. It tenses her, grits her teeth.
“He’s just going to make sure nobody is listening, physically or otherwise.” Conna sits back. “Anise, you love these two, right?”
Anise’s eyes widen. “I do,” she says.
“With all your heart.”
“God, Conna…”
“This is important.”
Anise’s spine straightens. “Yes. With all my heart.”
“Okay.” Conna looks between Nick and Dee. “Then you can hear this, too. But none of it leaves this room. Not yet.” She rests her palms on the table. “Where was I?”
“Your birth.”
“Let’s skip ahead.” She drums against the hardwood. “So Dee can vouch for the truth of this statement, I’m sure. The draconic royal family, they’re mostly assholes.”
Dee snorts out a bitter laugh. “Yup.”
“So early on, I figure this out, and I decide to check out.” Conna drags a taloned thumb across her throat. “All the way out. No playing the game, no political chess match shit. Which, in retrospect, was idiotic. But I was a kid. What I wanted to do was music. I wanted to be the greatest balladeer out of Elfheim. Idiot mistake number two. You already know this—in the Old World, music is magic, and magic is power.” She sighs. “It’s not fair, I think. Making something so beautiful, so dangerous.”
“Like how badass smoking looks,” Kell offers.
Conna chuckles. “Like that. Anyway. The most musical, and magical, and dangerous dragons, they’re all in one particular family. The family, as far as dragons are concerned. I’m related to them—everyone’s sorta related to everyone. They’re called the Lutorii. The big leader is a dragon named Hyrax Lutorius.”
Dee recognizes the name. Most people in the Old World would.
“I have some Lutorius cousins, but I was never interested in marrying into the family. But the more I learned, the better I got, the more interested they were in me. You gotta understand. I didn’t know a single spell and didn’t want to. I just dig music. The shit they were offering, the power, the station, the arcane knowledge, I wanted none of it. Eventually, they cottoned to the fact that asking wouldn’t work. So they stopped asking. One day I wake up and they introduce me to my new husband-to-be. And it’s not a proposal. It’s a demand.”
“That’s awful.” Evan’s bright blue eyes wrinkle below his brow. “I’m sorry, Con.”
“I fled, and I hid. You already know this, too: we’re good at hiding. But the Lutorii, they didn’t want a dragon with my potential out there beyond their influence. I’m not saying this to brag, but I was kind of a prodigy. And if I was willing to flee the Lutorii, run out from Elfheim and risk the laws and the dracopact, I guess they decided I’d be willing to move against them, too. They sought me for decades, but they never found me. So instead, they devised a spell. A spell that would target draconic blood. To find me wherever I dwelt and make sure I’d never be a problem for them. And they pointed it at Daria.”
Anise’s hand is over her mouth.
“My guess is they didn’t realize just how many people have some dragon in their DNA. Of course, there are legends and stories all over the place of dragons having kids with non-dragons. What can I say, we’re a pretty horny species. But just how widespread, and just how much blood was enough blood to be affected by it… I can’t imagine they counted on that. Not on zapping out millions of fairfolk.”
Nick’s voice is barely above a whisper. “The crossover was because of you?”
Conna shakes her head. “The crossover was because of my dickhead family and their dumb magical meddling. Every fairfolk who ended up on Earth had draconic blood in them. For almost all of them, it’s minuscule. Some ancestor way up the line. My theory is that there are dragons like me who want nothing to do with their birthright, more than anyone thought there were.”
Dee can hear Anise’s sharp intake of breath. “That means—”
“That means you are part dragon, Anise. A teeny tiny, ultra-diluted part, almost certainly. But yes. As is Kell, as is Thekla, as is Nick, as is Sion.”
Nick’s look at Dee has an undertone of apprehensive panic. Dee plants her hand firmly on his thigh and gives him a tiny shake of her head. She will not allow him to freak out about this; it changes nothing between them.
“It was my hunch at first,” Conna says. “My suspicion. Sion and I have spent the last two years putting it all together. I’ve reconstructed the spell. I can reproduce it. I can prove it. I’ve gathered proof, I’m finding evidence. If I can get people’s attention, get them to listen to what I have to say, I can expose the Lutorii as the reason a million fairfolk were forced to live and die unfathomably, dimensionally far from home. I mean, this shit is unforgiveable. The Kamiyons were split in half. On this side, the clan barely survived it. They showed me the records, the journals that they kept. It crushed them. Families bisected, people waking up to find their husbands and children just gone. Can you imagine it?”
Dee can imagine it. She knows just how it is to lose a member of your family without warning.
“These motherfuckers still run Elfheim,” Conna continues. “They basically run the O-Dub. And I need your help.”
“No,” Dee says.
Conna’s attention snaps to her.
“This is not something we’re getting involved with. Ani, I’m sorry.” Dee stares back at her across the table. “Pack Voraag is not doing dragon politics. I’m putting my foot down.”
“People need to know this,” Conna says.
“Maybe they do. Maybe you’re right. We’re on a rock tour.”
“Music is magic,” Conna says. “Magic is power. I’m not asking you to confront these people yourself. All I need from you is for you to bring Sion and me with you. To Elfheim.”
Dee crosses her arms tight. “No.”
“We could take this to the Earth governments,” Anise says. “We could take them to task—”
“Absolutely not.” Conna stands up. “No fuckin’ way will I let you do that. Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. Dee, can you point that somewhere else, please.”
Dee slowly lowers her gun.
“No, Ani,” Conna says. “We cannot do that. I love humanity; I’ve lived with them for centuries. I don’t trust them to handle this, not for a second. I will not be responsible for starting some kind of dimensional fucking cold war. This gets solved in the Old World. If you’d let me fill you in on the plan—”
“We ain’t part of the plan,” Dee snarls. Her rifle is back to leaning against her chair, but her palm is still resting on the handle. “I’m not putting the lives of my clients and my pack at risk for your family drama. I don’t know how else to say it for you to understand—”
“Anders,” Conna says. “The dragon who thralled your sister.”
Dee’s blood freezes.
“I know who he is,” Conna says. “Where he is. He was calling himself Anders, right? When he did it?”
Dee’s throat has closed up.
“His name is Septimanx Lutorius,” Conna says. “Seventh son of Hyax Lutorius. My cousin. Help me make them pay, and I’ll help you make him pay.”
Dee stands with such speed that her chair tips back and slams into the floor, then turns on her heel and leaves the room.
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So know we know how all the fae ended up on New Earth. Missing explanation on how all humans got unto Old Earth.