I may have to kill him.
Probably, Liz says.
But just as he’s about to slam into us, I pull, hard, snaking his magic away. I hadn’t realized I could even do that, but since I sort of stole Veralden Radien’s essence, I suppose what he gave, I can take away.
Bjorn, deprived of his innate abilities, his gift from the sky, flaps his wings desperately and still plummets into the ocean below. Liz laughs as he crashes. “I guess it’s not just your wings that enable you all to fly.”
It’s at least half magic, I say. As you could probably already tell from our speed.
“Yeah, sure,” she says. “I could tell. I know things about velocity and stuff.” She looks downward, and she smiles, broadly. “Okay, this is really, super fun.”
Below us, Bjorn’s thrashing around in the water, barely keeping his head above the waves.
“No one taught him to swim, and I bet he’s wishing they had.”
The next wave of vanir wind up the same place as Papa Bjorn, as Liz keeps calling him, and then the wave of aggressors after that. But sometime around the fourth or fifth group that comes to attack me, they start to realize that I can de-magic them, and they don’t want to join the others in dragon soup.
“That’s right.” Liz has taken to flying slowly back and forth above then, shouting nonsense. “Bob for apples, little babies.”
I can’t help snorting a little. She’s a stunning creature, especially now that she glows a startling gold from the life force Jörð gifted to her. It takes us nearly an hour more to get the vanir to listen, and then we reroute them back up north to the evacuated areas.
It won’t be fast, but I believe we can rehabilitate most of the vanir. It took me time to understand the importance of the bond between earth and sky children, and I believe they can learn the benefits of it, too.
“That was well done,” Liz says. “But I still don’t think you’re going to be able to reform Bjorn.”
I’m worried she’s right, but we have time. He won’t regain his magic until he changes. And if he can’t change, he’ll perish without it. Unlike the earth children, without our magic, the vanir and the æsir can’t survive here on earth.
I portal us back to the Northern Territory.
“Is this where you want to live, now?” Liz asks. “Are the schools here any good? Do you know?”
I blink. The what?
“Well, if I’m going to be having a baby at some point, we’ll need to make sure the schools here are good.”
A baby? I can’t help my confusion. Do you mean a hatchling?
She laughs. “Gosh, I hope not. I’m not a dragon.”
But I am.
“Listen up, sir.” She taps my shoulder where she’s sitting. “You certainly weren’t a dragon when you fathered this. . .” She coughs. “Oh, no. What if it is an egg?” She flaps her wings, floating away from her seat on my back. “What if I go as nuts as your mother?”
Don’t do that, I complain. If you’re riding me, ride me. If you’re flying, then fly.
She’s ignoring me entirely, flying in small circles over the home that Gordon’s hard at work trying to repair.
Liz.
She freezes, and when she looks at me, she looks terribly upset.
What’s wrong?
Her eyes well with tears and she starts to sob. She’s now hovering over our ruined home, bawling.
It’s okay, I say. I’ll help Gordon, and we can repair it quickly. The wall will be no problem, but if it’s taking too long, I’m sure the other earth blessed will?—
“Rufus should be here to help.” She begins to cry harder. Her wings beat frantically, blowing debris from Gordon’s partial wall demolition in tiny circles all over the already messy floor. “It would be repaired so much faster if he were here.”
