Draconia Offline vol. 1

60.2. In Mourning - Part 2

"Can't it wait until tomorrow?" Erik starts massaging my sore wing muscles.

"I can take care of it," Liana offers.

"You're just as tired as I am," I oppose. "Let them in, I can do another hour or so."

My subjects aren't happy to keep overworking me but this is an emergency so it's only understandable. This is my lifestyle now—unending workload, no privacy, titles and responsibility. But I'm somehow more at ease with it now that I've fully accepted to be the Celestial Emperor.

Deminas and Fefnir show up first, having to bend their heads because the door frames are too low for them. Deminas is frowning his scaly eyebrows which might look menacing to humans but to us it's obvious he's just worried. Twyla and Werden follow in a minute.

"Aefener, you're okay!" Twyla hugs me warmly. "What happened?"

"Seriously," Deminas grumbles. "A race ruler can't just disappear, it might cause panic."

"Emi disappeared and everybody's fine with it," I purse my lips.

"I'll correct myself then—the Celestial Emperor can't disappear like that," Deminas looks around. "And then mysteriously bring thousands of new Celestials with him."

"That's actually not my fault," I say defensively and give a word to Liana to explain what happened.

They listen carefully and when this matter is cleared, I tell them what we agreed on with Bennett.

"I didn't dare to speak for all races but Celestials in the EU promised to protect humans," I summarise.

"It'll be a proper job, right? For money?" Werden is making sure.

"That's right."

"And dead monsters?" Deminas clicks his tongue which in his case produces a noticeable fume.

"Loot will belong to us, we insisted on that," Liana assures him. "As for how to divide resources, we propose sharing, trading and focusing on what each race can do best. There should be a working economy not only between Draconians and humans but also between ourselves."

"You mean we craft a weapon, you enchant it," Fefnir finishes that idea.

"And we will be producing potions and provide healing," Twyla seconds.

"And Clawfangs?" Werden impatiently thumbs his fingers. "Damn, Emi should have been here at least for the negotiations."

"Securing resources, stealth, recon and possibly... beast taming?" I name a few.

"We complement each other a bit too well," Deminas clenches his teeth. "As if Draconians were carefully engineered exactly with that in mind."

A shiver goes down my spine. We're back at the original problem. How was the Great Evolution even possible? Who did it? For what purpose? Where are these monsters coming from? Why? Why? Why?

"For now, there's nothing better that we can do than use it to our advantage," Twyla says resignedly. "We should focus on what we can naturally do best."

"Sure, we got ourselves a ton of chitin so I'd actually prefer to focus on processing it instead of politics," Deminas agrees. "We'll gladly leave intellectual stuff to Celestials. Of course, we'll want to be kept updated and vote on the most important decisions."

"And we'll happily focus on medicine and biological research," Werden nods.

"Hey, who says I enjoy politics? I'd rather focus on magic research," I retort.

"You're just natural at it," Twyla says amicably. "Lore-wise, Celestials seek power and influence. If you won't abuse those powers, we have no problem with it."