Pala14: Thieves

Chapter Twenty-Three: Project GodKiller

"You know not all of them are bad right, like literally, some of those dragons are the same Outclaws and Rainwings that helped us." I explained to Alan.

"Yes, and although I understand, it is best to keep them separate after their little revolt."

"Okay, I completely support that, but why should we keep all of them and not just the prisoners of war?"

"Alright, alright, I see your point, we don't need to have so many hostages."

"Exactly." I sighed as I walked through the screen-gate, watching as the dust was cleaned off of me. "For what it's worth, I know these creatures are strange, and I have many questions too, but we are trying to stay on their good side. That's the best way to put it right now, even if they aren't our friends, let's try not to piss them off."

"You're right, but Johan has his points too." 

I roll my eyes. "If it were up to him, he'd completely get rid of the dragons completely."

"Yes, but it's natural, is it not? For the superior empire to take a weaker one?"

"You're speaking of enslavement?"

"As much as we wish that The Hoard will be the way out, our empire won't stop once we leave Pala14 and eventually, we will take this world back, unless..."

I sigh, "I've tried not thinking about that." But then my ears perked up. "Unless what?"

"Well, you know how I mentioned how dragon-born's have increased abilities?"

"Yeah, if you have a problem with it, why not just edit the genes out instead of making a fuss out of it like earlier today?"

"Because we didn't program it." He stated as he opened the door for me as we walked into the lab. It was spacious but it barely held the dissected dragon wing on the ceiling, and littering the walls were sketches and questions of the dragons anatomy written in black marker on the white background. 

I coughed a bit and put my mask back on. "Smells like shit." I remarked as I looked at the Sandwing's wing. 

"Ever since we met those things, I've wondered how they could ever exist. They just don't make sense as creatures. A real creature couldn't fly and breathe fire at that size, they're too big to survive and the brains, look here, look!" He motioned as he brought me to a computer of a brain labelled, Human-file, and a brain labelled, Suntail-file. The human brain looked average while the dragon brain looked large and extended, but it was only a little bit larger than the human brain, and surrounding it was some blue glow in the black and white screen.

"What am I looking at?" I asked as he pointed to the brain. "It can't think, it isn't fully sentient. Even the dragon-born!" He exclaimed as he showed another picture of a smaller human brain with the blue glow, way too small.

"But they-"

"Exactly, so I went digging and found this." He said as he tapped the blue glow.

"What is it?" 

"This, my friend, is Project Mana, or as the dragons refer to it, animus."

"So... it's real?"

"It's magic... like I know 'science is magic but real,' but this, this is... the holy grail of science." He said as he showed a shifting image of an animus atom, despite being a photo, the atom in the picture was constantly shifting shape, from long to short, to smooth to jagged.''

"Old records of Earth show that the project was meant to manipulate and bend space and time, pure magic!"

"And what happened?"