In quick strokes, she outlined the story she had heard from the dragons she fought near the orcish village. At some point, centuries before, several dragons had decided to pose as gods. They divided the tribes and made the orcs offer regular sacrifices to them. Their claim was that this was justified and, when she explained to them that it was horseshit, they had told her another dragon had given its life for peace and prosperity in Insea.
When she finished, Kural leapt to his feet and began to pace. She opened her mouth with questions and Zaara waved frantically at her to be quiet. The other woman moved to whisper in her ear.
“He can be absolutely infuriating and he tends to focus on the wrong thing in a fight, but the man has been alive for over three hundred years, and he knows a lot. From experience, I’d say to let him think.”
Dotty sat, waited, and twiddled her fingers. It felt a little weird to do that in this extraordinary dress. She felt as if she should hold a tiny crystal glass of a rare liqueur and glide around a ballroom but instead, there she was in a very staid, normal park with a strange group eating pizza and chatting about the downfall of the world.
“Here is my guess,” Kural said at last. He linked his hands behind his back and began to pace in a much more measured way. “First, I should say that I can confirm the stories of Insea being founded by a dragon—let us not go into how I know, but I do know. However, I am beginning to think I missed some rather important details.” He continued to walk, his hands behind his back. “There were many old stories of elven shamans who communed with dragons. Some of the stories are rather inappropriate, but some—”
“Wait…wait.” Tina held a hand out. “Inappropriate how?”
Everyone looked at her.
“We all wondered,” she said with great dignity. “But, fine. Be boring.” She gestured at the wizard to continue.
“Some,” he resumed with a sideways look at her, “were about dragons and elves going further in magic than either race had gone separately. I wonder if one such partnership fueled the creation of Insea. It would explain why the city has always been believed to be an elven creation and why the elves were able to teach some of the same magic to the dwarves. But it would also explain why this magic has not been replicated since. It needs not only a great deal of power but a truly extraordinary magician with an amazing amount of power.”
Dotty looked around. “So…did the elf kill the dragon?”
“Oh, no,” Kural assured her. “A dragon who could provide this much power would…hmm, how to explain it? I doubt there would be anything on earth that could compel it to do anything. No, what it did here, it did willingly—and I would guess that it not only helped create the spell but until recently, maintained it.”
Everyone frowned.
“What happened recently?” Justin asked finally.
“I have no idea,” the wizard said promptly. “There are a great many questions we have to answer, and if we are on the right track, I would say we have very little time in which to answer them. To the palace, everyone. At once.”
“As long as we can stop for pizza,” Dotty said.
“Agreed,” Lyle chimed in.
Kural shook his head. “Fine. But you eat while we walk, and we also need to plan. We’ll need to infiltrate the castle.”
“I’ll help,” the dwarf said.
Everyone winced.
“You’re not…” Justin said and seemed to try to be diplomatic. “Um…”
“We all have our strengths,” Zaara said with a pained smile.
“And yours is not subtlety,” Dotty said before the rest of the youngsters could tie themselves in any more knots.
“I know that,” Lyle said. “That’s why I’m offering to be the diversion.”
They relaxed as one.
“Better,” Justin said.
Chapter Three
Nick took a big bite of his bagel as he wove between the pods in the lab. For the past few months, only one pod had been used at a time, excluding temporary visitors to the world of PIVOT. Right now, there were three patients with three more coming over the next few weeks, and the lab was already an almost unbearable crush.
Also, with all the monitoring equipment beeping, it sounded like a robot convention.
He flipped the second-to-last page of his printout and kept reading as he walked. He was finishing the bagel when he arrived at the row of desks that overlooked the labs. Amber and Jacob were already there, talking quietly over a cup of coffee, and DuBois was asleep at his desk.
The group had joked that they weren’t sure if the doctor had a place to stay in New York, but they began to think the joke might be reality. They had started dropping increasingly desperate hints that they had pull-out couches and air mattresses available, but so far, he seemed perfectly content to sleep at his desk.
Maybe he was a robot, Nick thought. He rolled his desk chair to where his partners were. “Sorry I’m late. I thought I started at the normal time—”
“You aren’t,” Amber said. “We both got here early.”
“Oh. That explains it.” He shook the printout and poppy seeds from the bagel drifted to the floor. “So. Mattis file?”
“Right.” Amber leaned forward to snatch her copy off the desk. “You said you had concerns?”
“We have three patients now,” he pointed out, “and it is overwhelming. We had to institute a checklist for casual conversations to make sure we weren’t talking about different people. It was a nightmare. I almost gave Jenna heart failure the other day when I was talking about Dotty and she was talking about Kyle. We have three more coming soon and this lab will be a circus. I honestly don’t think we need another person right now.”
She nodded and looked at Jacob for his input.
He rubbed his forehead wearily. “I can’t argue with that. The thought of another person is…intimidating. I’ve literally had nightmares about adding the next three.”
“Nightmares?” Amber said.
“Yeah. Kind of? I don’t know. I dreamed I was stuck in this loop of doing the hourly readout checks and no one else was here. I kept going to start one and then remembered I hadn’t finished the last and I never seemed to be done. Anyway, I woke up and threw up.” He took a sip of coffee and stared into the distance. “I’m fairly sure my neighbor thinks I’m a junkie.”
Nick snickered. “Yeah. So, that’s my point. We don’t need Jacob waking up in the middle of the night to hurl. He’s already lost too much weight since we moved here.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what happened with that.” He scratched at his chin, where there was a few days’ worth of stubble.
“You’re way too stressed,” Amber said. She looked at Nick and gestured to herself. “We all are. Although if I could upgrade to the version of stress where you lose weight instead of gain it, I’d like to do that now, please.”
“Seconded,” Nick said glumly.
Jacob laughed and rubbed his head. “If you’d told me six months ago that I’d lose my mind because we had too many patients, I’d have said you were crazy.”