>>5714901>>5714906>>5715028>>5715078Between gathering and applying intelligence, this trade deal has dominated all your time in Blackpine. A part of you had hoped to go hunting, or to take in the sights. The surface world really is such a wondrous place—including its nature—and yet it occurs to you that you’ve seen precious little of it. Before you go, you want to change that, and there is one particular individual with whom you would spend this time.
“May I interrupt this lesson? I wish to borrow The Unknowable One.”
“Of course, Superior One!”
You have been impressed by the occultist’s patience with your son. If Natvodosk the Unknowable is your least rambunctious child (so FAR, one hopes), he is still a handful. How could he not be? He is an apex predator, a natural born soldier, nearly as large as your <Dragonshape> and with all the restraint one would expect of a hatchling. He is especially dangerous for one who does not have a <Fearsome Presence> to keep him in check. A part of you expected to find your demon-expert cocooned and half-eaten when you instructed her to tutor your wyrmling spawn, but each time you checked in on the, you found your quietly-unsettling insectoid offspring watching and listening to her explanations of planar theory and demonic hierarchies attentively.
“Is he retaining much?” you ask the occultist, once Nat has skitter-slithered outside. “He is very young…”
“This is true, Oh Dragon King,” the Occultist reflects. “We normally begin such tutelage only when a hatchling is three or five years old, depending upon caste and aptitude. And it IS true that the Unknowable One struggles with the fine motor skills and precision necessary to form a truly SECURE summoning circle… But for a Young One of only two summers, he retains much more than I would expect! I think this one ahs the makings of a fine occultist… If you and the Queen would permit such, of course.”
You tell her you will think it over, and thank the young Dragonblood for her service, mentallya didng her to the shortlist of servants with whom you can safely leave your wyrm princes… or at least this one. She seems over the moon to be thanked directly by the Dragon King. Apparently even after all this travel together, your celebrity status has not yet worn away with her. You suppose that, unlike the Thief and Translator, or even your Archer, she never knew you as a ‘mere’ Dragonborn Champion, but always as Conqueror of Bloodrise and Dark Prophet of the Coming Age.
