After Ariom and Bero had left, Thenio let out a sigh and fell backwards onto the bed.

It was a nice bed. Very comfortable. Probably very expensive.

"Do you want a snack stick, Thenio? I have two. We can both have one!"

Thenio looked over to see Iggy nudging one of the brown sticks toward him with his nose. Based on the color, they were probably some kind of dried meat.

"That's okay," Thenio told him with a smile. "I'm not hungry right now. Go ahead and eat them both." 

The little dragon didn't need to be persuaded. He happily sat down and started gnawing on the end of one of the sticks. Thenio watched him for a minute before closing his eyes. 

He really should start unpacking his things. But he just needed a little time to calm down and process everything that had happened in the last couple of hours. 

The anxiety of packing up and moving to a new place with people he only barely knew....

Discovering that his lifelong friend had been hiding things from him....

Suddenly being surrounded by luxuries he'd only dreamed of and feeling out-of-place and overwhelmed by it all....

It was only mid-afternoon, but he already felt like he'd had a very long day. The suppression bands that were still sapping his energy didn't help, either.

After a few minutes, the sounds of chewing stopped. Thenio could feel movement near him on the bed and then the weight of four little feet landing on his chest. He opened his eyes to see that Iggy had jumped on top of him, carrying Obby in his mouth. He set the chicken down, circled around it a couple of times, and then lay down with his body curled into a little circle around the toy.

Thenio reached up and scratched Iggy's ears. "Are you feeling tired now, too?"

"Mmm." Iggy yawned, showing off a mouthful of pointy white teeth. Then he laid his head down and closed his eyes.

Thenio stroked the little dragon's back for a minute or two and then closed his eyes again, too.

Maybe it was okay to just stay like this for a while.

 

---

 

When Thenio woke up, the room was lit by the glow of late afternoon sunlight. He blinked at the unfamiliar ceiling for a minute, remembering where he was. Iggy was no longer curled up on his chest, but there was a scratching sound coming from the other side of the bed. When Thenio looked over, he saw the little dragon wrestling with Obby, rolling around and letting out soft growls while he bit at the poor chicken and kicked it with his hind legs.

He could see why Ariom was in the habit of putting reinforcement enchantments on all of Iggy's toys....

Thenio watched for a few minutes, until Iggy flipped himself over so that he was facing in Thenio's direction. 

"Oh, hi, Thenio!" The little dragon immediately let go of Obby, his ferocity vanishing completely. "You're awake!"

"Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep." Thenio sat up and looked at the pile of luggage on the floor next to the bed. "I should have been unpacking...."

"It's okay." Iggy got up and trotted over to put his front paws up on Thenio's leg. "Uncle Bero said it's important to let Thenio rest and get comfy. Because it's really hard to have scared magic, right? It makes you feel all tired and mixed up inside, right? So we need to help Thenio feel better!"

Thenio felt his throat tighten a little. He wasn't used to people being this considerate of him. "Bero seems to know a lot about magic instability for somebody who runs a chicken farm," he said, trying to divert the topic to something less awkward.

"He didn't always have chickens, you know? He used to work at the place we went for your meeting. That place with lots of life magic."

"The Stability Center? Was he a doctor there?" Thenio frowned. "That's a really good job, isn't it? Why did he leave?"

"I'm not sure? He doesn't like to talk about it very much. And Ariom doesn't like to talk about it. But." Iggy's ears drooped a little. "I think. He was too sad to stay there."

Too sad? Thenio opened his mouth to ask what that meant, but then he closed it again. He didn't need to ask. It was obvious what it meant.

And Thenio didn't want to talk about it, either.

"Well, it's getting late. I really should unpack a few things, at least," he said, glancing at the window and forcing a smile. "Do you want to help me?"

"Mmm! Okay!" Iggy waved his tail happily.

 

---

 

They left the room about an hour later. Thenio still hadn't gotten much unpacking done–the process had gotten derailed when he'd taken out his sketchbook and drawing supplies, which had immediately captured Iggy's attention. But he'd managed to find places for a few of his possessions in between answering the little dragon's questions and helping him look through the sketchbook. Iggy's squirrel-like paws were good for climbing and holding onto things, but he had some trouble turning pages.

Thenio hardly knew where anything was in the house yet, but Iggy confidently led the way down the hallway with Obby floating along beside him.

"This goes into the dragon room," he said as they passed an open doorway with what looked like a large bathroom on the other side. "This end is where I take baths! Dragons have to take lots of baths, you know? To keep our scales from getting ouchy. But it's okay. I like to play in the water, and Ariom makes fun bath toys. And I'm really good at swimming! I'll show you later, okay? We can play in the water together!"

Thenio simply nodded in agreement, not bothering to interrupt Iggy's excited chattering.

"And this is Ariom's room," the dragon went on, pausing in front of a door on the opposite side of the hall. "It looks a lot like your room inside. I sleep in here at night sometimes. My normal bed is in the dragon room, but sometimes I feel lonely, you know? So then I sleep in my bed in Ariom's room. I can sleep in your room sometimes, too, if you want! Sundog and I used to go sleep with Toflyn sometimes. I miss Sundog...." Iggy's ears drooped sadly. "He's my cousin, you know? We used to play a lot together. But then he had to leave because Toflyn got a job in another city. Tava and Seyli still come over to play, though. They can't come all the time, because Seyli has to go to school, you know? She goes to the same school where I met you! But sometimes they come. Tava is my cousin, too. I have lots of cousins! And Seyli is Toflyn's little sister, so she's Ariom's cousin like Toflyn is, okay? Ariom doesn't have as many cousins as I do, but it's still kind of a lot? I think?"

Thenio nodded again. Though this time it was less because he didn't want to interrupt and more because he was feeling rather overwhelmed by all the cousins....

Fortunately, they had reached the end of the hallway. Iggy stopped his explanation and bounded out into the open space in front of them. "This is the atrium!" he called behind him. "Thenio, look! This is where my climbing tree is!"

They were on a balcony that looked out over a large, glassed-in garden area. Iggy leapt into the air and flew over the balcony railing, heading toward a sprawling oak tree in the center of the atrium. He landed on one of the branches and disappeared into a small tunnel that wound around through the leaves. Looking closer, Thenio noticed several tunnels like that, along with a number of swings, platforms, and cubbyholes. It seemed to be an artificial tree designed specifically for dragons to play on, even though it looked very realistic.

"Looks like you're continuing your tour of the house. Are you feeling a little better?"

The balcony was wide enough to have space for several comfortable-looking armchairs and small tables. Bero was seated in one of these chairs, looking through a sheaf of papers. Humerus was beside him, stretched out on one of the chair's arms.

"Yeah, a little." Thenio slowly made his way over while looking around. "This place is huge...."

"Ariom did overdo it a bit with this atrium," Bero admitted with a wry smile. "Especially since he mostly designed it as a play area for Iggy. He's not that good with people, so he might seem cold at times, but he has a major soft spot for that silly little dragon."

"He built this whole space just for Iggy?" Thenio was a bit shocked. "It must have cost a fortune...."

This was a grandmaster enchanter who could apparently make things like message books and space pockets. He probably wasn't hurting for money at all. But still...Thenio was pretty sure that most familiars weren't spoiled to this extent.

"Well, it was also because of Toflyn. He studied both enchanting and magic zoology, and he specifically wanted to design enchanted products for magic beasts. That's what he's doing now–he got a job at a workshop in Chasil that specializes in things like that. Anyways...he and Ariom used to get a little carried away sometimes, designing and testing out new products. Their dragons were the beneficiaries of that. Though they made some nice things for my farm, too, so I can't complain too much."

Humerus nodded. "They made me a new carry bag. It's nice. Much more comfortable than the old one."

"They made lots and lots of good toys!" Iggy landed on the balcony railing with a soft clatter. "Like my train! And the sandbox! And my glowing balls! And...oh! Obby, too!" he added as the little stuffed chicken floated up behind him.

"You and your toys...." Humerus shook his head.

"If Iggy liking toys bothers you so much, does that mean you don't want this back?"

Thenio looked up at the voice and saw Ariom coming from the opposite end of the balcony, holding up Humerus' wooden doll.

Humerus' ears perked up, and he jumped off the arm of the chair onto a nearby table to get closer to Ariom. "I never said that! I want my puppet!"

Ariom raised an eyebrow at him but handed over the puppet. Humerus sat up and hugged it with his front paws, as though he were afraid Ariom would take it away again.

"I have yours, too, Iggy. I made something for it to hang from." Ariom held up a curved metal hanger with a flat base. Iggy's wooden chicken was dangling from the end of it.

"My flying chicken!" Iggy jumped off the railing and ran over to Ariom. "Obby, look! It's our new chicken friend!"

Ariom set the metal stand down on the floor, and Iggy immediately took hold of the wooden ring and started pulling on it, making the chicken's wings flap up and down. The little dragon waved his own wings, swished his tail, and even stomped his feet along with it, like he was doing some kind of wild dance.

Thenio watched Iggy's exuberant display for a minute and then looked back at Humerus, who was simply inspecting his doll with a happy expression. "Humerus really is a lot calmer than Iggy, isn't he? I guess dragons have all kinds of different personalities."

"Well, they do. And I'd say most dragons are calmer than Iggy," Bero said with a chuckle. "But Humerus isn't really the best reference for that. Since he's not an actual dragon."

"Wait, what?" Thenio blinked at Bero, bemused, then stared at Humerus. "He's not?"

He certainly looked like a dragon....

"He's currently living in a dragon's body, but he's not a dragon himself. He's a revenant."

"Hmph. Why'd you have to tell him already?" Humerus turned away from the puppet and glared at Bero, flicking his tail grouchily. "I wanted to surprise him by suddenly having my head fall off or something."

Ariom gave him a stern look. "I told you before, no pranking Thenio. His magic's in bad shape right now, and if he gets startled too badly, he might lose control and explode."

"Aww...." Humerus' red scales suddenly all vanished in a wisp of magic particles, and he collapsed into a sulky-looking pile of bones on the table. "That's no fun." 

Thenio's cheek twitched. He probably shouldn't be that surprised, having just learned what Humerus really was. He knew that revenants were spectral beasts that inhabited dead bodies. But it was still a little shocking to see what looked like a normal, living dragon suddenly turning into lifeless bones.

Lifeless, but sulky. Thenio wasn't sure how he managed that....

"This is serious, Humerus," Ariom scolded him. "If you make Thenio explode, I'm not giving you any gryphon eggs."

"What?" The skeletal head suddenly lifted again. "No! You promised me eggs!"

"I promised you eggs if you helped. Playing tricks on Thenio and making him lose control isn't helping."

"Keh!" Humerus made an annoyed sound. "Fine."

"He eats gryphon eggs?!" That shocked Thenio even more than finding out Humerus was a revenant. Gryphons weren't quite as expensive as dragons, but that was still way too much to spend on food for a familiar, no matter how much money grandmaster enchanters made.

"Pygmy gryphons," Bero corrected. "Not regular ones. Regular gryphon eggs are too high in magic content for him to eat. Revenants can lose their senses and turn violent if they eat too much magic at once, so I have to monitor his diet carefully. But there are some varieties of pygmy gryphons that have been specially bred to produce unfertilized eggs on a regular basis. That makes the magic level significantly lower, and it means they're cheap enough to buy for an occasional treat. Humerus loves them."

"Gryphon eggs are the best!" Now that he was in skeletal form, Humerus' facial expressions were limited, but a pair of green flames sparkled enthusiastically in his eye sockets. "I keep telling you we should have a flock of pygmy gryphons on the farm. They'd be so much better than those stupid chickens. We could have gryphon eggs all the time!"

Bero narrowed his eyes. "If we had gryphon eggs all the time, you would eat gryphon eggs all the time. Which would overload you on magic and make you sick."

"I wouldn't!" Humerus protested.

"You would, you greedy bunch of bones," Ariom said, frowning at him. "If anyone let you, you'd keep eating until you went crazy, and Uncle Bero would have to call in a team of combat wizards to help take you down. How embarrassing would that be, huh? To have to call pest control on your very own familiar?"

"Bero!" Humerus whined, jumping back to the chair and climbing onto Bero's lap. "Ariom's being mean to me again!"

"He is. But he's also right. So who am I supposed to side with here?" Despite his callous words, Bero reached up and rubbed Humerus' bony head affectionately. Then he glanced at Thenio. "Don't mind these two. They grew up together, so they're basically like siblings. They always squabble like this. They don't really mean it." 

"Hmph. I'm not sure about that...." Humerus said grumpily. Then he seemed to remember that he'd left his doll behind. He turned to look back at the table. A second later, the doll stirred and got up by itself. It walked across the table, jumped into the air, and floated over to land on Bero's lap next to Humerus. "Good, it still feels the same," the dragon skeleton said happily. "You did a good job with the enchanting!" He seemed to be pleased enough to forget that he and Ariom were quarreling a moment before.

Thenio watched this whole process with a slightly incredulous expression on his face. Having an innocent-looking doll suddenly get up and move around was a little.... At least he could understand now why Humerus would like puppets so much. Revenants were well-known for their skill at puppeteering magic. That was how they manipulated the corpses they lived in. Spectral beasts didn't have physical bodies, although some could create magic constructs that looked like bodies. Higher-level revenants could do that as well, which was probably how Humerus made himself look like an ordinary dragon. 

Revenants were generally considered the most intelligent of the known types of spectral beasts, so they were usually the ones wizards chose to make familiar contracts with. But spectral beast familiars of any kind were very rare. Most wizards weren't keen on the idea of having such a creepy-looking companion. And spectral beasts could be dangerous, so you had to get a special license in order to handle them or form a contract with one. Which more or less required a necromancy certification, since wizards in other fields were rarely sensitive enough to the magic of living creatures to be able to perceive spectral beasts properly when they were in their natural forms.

Oh. So that was why Bero and Ariom had realized Eteon could use magic. Because he'd been able to tell that Humerus was a revenant. Which was something that a non-magic user...or even a low-level magic user...shouldn't be able to do.

It looked like Eteon really had been hiding a lot of things....

Bero seemed to notice Thenio's troubled expression. "I'm sorry we didn't tell you about Humerus sooner. I just didn't think it was a good idea to bring it up right when we first met. People usually don't react well to that.... I know spectral beasts make a lot of people uncomfortable. That's why Humerus disguises himself as a living dragon when we go out in public. He can keep his skin on for you, if you'd rather not see a skeleton walking around." He patted Humerus' back. "But you don't need to be afraid of him. He's under a strict contract, so he can't attack anyone without my permission. And he has enough sense to know better in the first place. It's basically fine for you to just think of him as a weird-looking dragon. He's lived around real dragons most of his life, so he's adopted a lot of their behaviors."

Humerus didn't disagree with anything Bero said, but his skeletal face looked a little sad somehow. Thenio felt sure that if he had ears, they would be drooping down right now. It probably wasn't easy for a spectral beast to live around humans, knowing that so many of them would reject him as soon as they found out what he was. Especially since he was living in a dragon body, and most people liked dragons.

Thenio felt a sudden sense of camaraderie toward the strange little creature.

"Well, I was surprised, and it will probably take me a little while to get used to having a revenant around. But I don't really mind the skeleton thing. So he can do whatever is comfortable for him. And I'm not used to being around dragons yet either, so it's not like I really even know the difference. So...yeah. It's fine," Thenio ended a bit lamely.

Though his embarrassment eased somewhat when he saw Humerus perk back up and wave his bony tail.

"You're a good kid," Bero said with a warm smile. "We always appreciate it when people try to be understanding." He patted Humerus again. "And Humerus is going to return the favor by being considerate and not playing tricks on you. Right, Humerus?"

"Oh." Humerus looked between Bero and Thenio. "Um...right."

"And when he inevitably forgets that he agreed to that and pranks you anyway...maybe he can at least remember to do something harmless instead of scaring you," Ariom said with a sigh. Then he looked at Thenio. "Revenants love playing tricks on people, but it's usually not malicious, in spite of what you may have heard. They're just fascinated by humans and like provoking us to see how we react. It's their way of learning about the world. Like children." He looked at Humerus with a sort of grudging affection. "Spectral beasts really aren't that bad once you get used to them. They just take a lot of patience. Well, I could say the same about certain little dragons..." he added, glancing over at Iggy, who was still doing his crazy chicken dance.

Thenio followed his gaze and smiled at the sight. 

Then his eyes widened a little as he realized something.

Necromancer. Spectral beasts. Chicken farm.

"Wait a minute...." He turned to look at Bero. "If you have a spectral beast license, then when you talk about raising chickens...."

Bero chuckled. "I see you figured it out. Yes, it's a spectral beast farm. And we specialize in dullahan chickens. Though we have real chickens, too, of course. To feed the dullahans."

Dullahan chickens. Thenio had never seen one, but he'd read about them. It was actually just a nickname, since they were neither dullahans nor chickens. They were mimics, one of the most dangerous kinds of spectral beasts. 

All spectral beasts had to consume magic from other sources in order to survive. Some were fairly passive about it and just absorbed whatever magic was present in their environment, but some absorbed magic by eating other creatures. Revenants like Humerus were usually just scavengers and opportunistic hunters. That was one of the reasons they were more likely to accept familiar contracts–they recognized it as a chance to get a stable food supply.

But mimics were aggressive predators. As their name implied, their favorite hunting tactic was to get close to their prey by mimicking its form. This made them very dangerous for any magic beasts or humans who weren't skilled enough to see through their disguises. But it also created a sort of loophole technique for raising low-level mimics in order to harvest the valuable alchemical materials they could produce. If mimics had a habit of taking on the form of whatever creatures they ate, all you had to do was make sure that you only fed them things that were small and non-threatening. 

Like chickens.

Dullahan chickens were mimics raised using this technique. The 'dullahan' part of the name came from how materials were usually harvested from them. Mimics formed a magic core in a part of their constructed bodies. This was where the mimic's real self was located. As long as this core wasn't harmed, the rest of the body could be damaged or even completely cut off, and the mimic would be fine. Then, over time, it would regrow its fake body, and the process could be repeated. It was like shearing a sheep. There were also ways of influencing where the core was formed in the body, and the standard practice was to keep it in the dullahan chicken's head.

So that's what Iggy had meant when he talked about Uncle Bero's 'chickens with removable heads....'

Thenio made a face. "And here I was imagining you retiring to live a quiet life on some peaceful little farm.... But no, you're raising bloodthirsty monsters...."

"I know, right?" Humerus nodded sagely. "Those fowl are really foul."

Bero put a hand over his face. "Please don't start with the chicken jokes, Humerus...." 

Humerus' eye flames narrowed. "Bero, we've talked about this. As the guy who gave me my name, you have no right to complain about my egg-cellent chicken yolks."

"You always have to bring that up...." Bero scowled at him.

"Because it's an im-peck-able point," Humerus said, sniggering. "You can't argue any feather."

"Oh, Humerus is telling jokes!" Iggy finally stopped playing with his wooden chicken and flew up to land on the back of Bero's chair. "Can you do some more?"

Humerus' eyes flared, and his tail swished with excitement. "Of course! I'm a bone-afide comedi-hen!"

"Did I mention they require a lot of patience...?" Ariom said with a sigh.