The Virtues' Magecraft

Page 82: The Beast's Return

Alexander awoke to a soft feeling on his fingertips. He was being licked, though he had no dog. He rolled over to the side of his bed and forced his eyes open, even while his room remained dark. It was still before sunrise.

He looked down and encountered a black dragon. A small one at that, no larger than a chihuahua.

"No way..." he muttered, beginning to stare into its deep, dark eyes, glistening like a starry night. "How the hell did you get here?!" he asked Shadowfax, almost expecting a verbal response.

She chirped at him, a relatively unusual response compared to her constant purring, before flapping her wings back and forth a bit. Her motion sent her up, right onto Alexander's bed, where she now began to lick the side of his cheek.

Alexander laughed in surprise and joy, gently wrapping his hand around the wyvern as he got up. Her ability to shift her size always confounded him, but for now, it was a beautiful advantage, one that meant she wouldn't tower over homes and draw attention from entire cities.

Despite the circumstance of delight, he had no choice but to take his mind to consider what would come next. Knowing his world, there would be something problematic and many people against the notion of the boy having a dragon in his house. Hell, Demon-Borns didn't even have human rights until a year ago.

He carried the dragon downstairs, immediately noticing the open window by the kitchen. That must have been her entrance, Alexander guessed. He set her down on the living room couch and went to fetch his phone to call the great Paladin he could trust.

By the time of his return, Shadowfax was on the floor, her head digging under the couch.

She had sensed a familiar energy and began to draw it out, finding and biting into a towel. Her sharp teeth gingerly secured a grip so as not to damage the cloth. And so, she dragged the weapon out of the shadows of the couch and brought it to Alexander's eyes.

Alexander spat out a sigh and dialed Archibald's number. He began to wait, listening to the ringing until the Paladin picked up.

"Archibald. Hey. Good morning. Um... No, I'm not calling for that. Sorry. Long story short... what is the protocol for having a dragon?"

Charles Archibald, who had decided to sleep in that day, was still in his bed. Hearing about a dragon was enough to shake the fuzziness of his sleepy mind and bring him to attention. "Alexander." He took in a deep breath before he spoke into the phone, still leaning to the side of the bed as if he expected it to be a quick call. "No hypotheticals. No jokes. Do you have a dragon right now?"

Alexander swallowed his dry saliva. "Yes sir."

An agonized groan echoed into Alexander's phone.

"It's a wyvern technically."

From there, Alexander was met with silence from the Paladin. "I'm sorry."

Within the following moment of silence, Alexander put himself in the Paladin's shoes. On Midgard and on Earth, dragons had been extinct. The magical creatures had been killed off on Earth almost completely, with a rare few being transported to Midgard in the hopes of allowing the species to live peacefully on its own.

That proved near impossible, with the carnivorous ones resorting to cannabilism and murder of the smaller subspecies of herbivorous dragons and wyverns. After that, they went after livestock and even humans.

Even while elves and dwarves and Asgardians slowly found their solutions to managing such a dangerous species, humans could never. And so, Charles Archibald burdened himself with a new problem brought to him by one of his beloved Virtues.