“Strider and I are the last ones to pair up.No, we are not going to race.”Drift chuckled.“I hope that one day I will have a child who will have cousins in the same family and both sides of the bloodline.”Drift smiled.“And then we can have a big picture with little blue kids and send it to the emperor.”
Tekumi blinked.“You met him?”
“We did.Kaido wanted to see his face, so one of their family lines carried the imperial djinn stamp.”Drift pointed at his head.“That would be the Rassmussens.”
Tekumi chuckled.“That explains a few things.I didn’t speak to him.What was he like?”
“Stunned, but he had a grip on the empress that was impressive.Her bracelets, anklets, and collar mean something, right?”
“They mean that she is a dragon and will not be laying any more eggs.She’s not allowed her complete form again, but she is allowed to live.Normally, female dragons are destroyed as soon as they manifest.”
Hector stared.“But baby dragons would be so cute.”
Tekumi paused.“A female dragon can give birth to fifty eggs, which can each lay up to a hundred eggs less than thirty years later.And go three hundred years into the future, and you have a world covered in dragons.At first, they are good partners, and when the good partners start running out, they are just aggressive.”
Hector blinked.“Right.Okay, I see the problem.”
Drift nodded.“Yeah, I can understand that.Holy shit.When Ford told me about dragons being real, I thought it was the coolest thing ever, but now...how do you even stop something like that?”
Tekumi smiled.“The djinn.No group of elves with dragons as a component can travel to a world without a representation of djinns.They can stop a dragon in its tracks and kill it if necessary.”
“Whoa.So, Ax can kill a dragon?”
“Not on her own.I will have to ask her if she knows a red djinn.They can kill dragons on their own.”
Hector muttered, “Oh.They sound terrifying.”
“They are always female and always assigned a mate as soon as they manifest.We have a number of races that require certain strictures.”
Hector asked, “What do the ladies think of the strictures?”
“Their guardians are chosen carefully for knowledge and temperament.”Tekumi winced.“The ladies choose one from two options.Their guardian and mate is responsible for any destruction that they create.”
Drift frowned.“What if they don’t get a mate?”
Tekumi paused and looked at him with serious eyes.“Chaos.”
Hector sipped at his tea.“Good thing we don’t have one of those, right?”
Drift nodded.“Right.But, Tekumi, there isn’t a chance of one of those being here, right?”
“Well, they normally occur in battle conditions, and there is a lot of that going on here.The bloodlines are proven to be powerful, which they are on this world, so one or two might emerge.That’s up to Avor to take care of or Vemel.Probably Vemel and Themak in this case.”
Hector frowned.“Why them?”
“Vemel is an imperial djinn, and Themak is his guardian.Asel will eventually take on the concerns of the female djinn, but she is young and needs to learn the ways of politics.”
Drift frowned.“Why is this all happening now?”
Tekumi sipped his tea and said, “Because Kaido protected her family, her mother, father, and sister until they were safe and the Elite could not touch them.Once that was done, she had used up a lot of her magic, and the emperor was able to come through.”
“So this is all happening because she missed her family?”
Tekumi nodded.“Yes.And she was a dragon who seeded this world with magic.One laying.One clutch.The result of those who are here and who carry skills and creatures under their skin...one clutch.”
Hector covered his mouth.
Drift smiled.“And she had enough control to make a line that was always dark blue.Who looked like her mate.And she wrapped us in enough magic that no one ever commented on the colouration.We look like this because she needed to see him in the world.It was humbling, actually, to meet him.”He laughed.“Terrifying as well.That is one scary dude.”
