Tarragon

Chapter Twenty-Four: Power Vacuum

-Amnoia

-June 9th, 2024

We had turned Tykranaea's castle into a gigantic voting center. I assisted my family in directing dragons to the voting booths, while breaking up any fights. This was so messy. We had three candidates:

Actomyr (ack-tow-meer), a scientist and philosopher who promised a golden age in the North, with the plans and credentials to back it up.

Renaphare, the leader of a crime ring responsible for hundreds of thousands of murders. The most prolific one in the North, too.

Vidi, a dragon who claimed to have killed a Frostforge dragon. That was their only credential. They were unable to verify this fact.

We were planning on running the first round, to eliminate one candidate, then running another round to get the final president. It went about as smoothly as sandpaper. I alone caught several counts of voter suppression; people casting twenty or even thirty votes; and a heavy mafia presence. It was all so much to handle.

After the day was out, we took the raw votes:

11% for Actomyr, 45% for Renasphere, and 44% for Vidi.

How? Actomyr is the only qualified candidate.

After about half an hour of sifting through people casting multiple votes, we got the actual numbers.

49% for Actomyr, 40% for Vidi, and 11% for Renasphere. I still didn't understand why half the population voted against Actomyr. We would have to get this all sorted.

We removed Renasphere from the ballot, and reopened the election center the next day, broadcasting the results. It went about as smoothly as one might expect.

An armored ice dragon walked up to me, snarling, "where is Renasphere? I am unable to vote for them,"

"Renasphere lost the first round, so they got kicked from the ballot," I explained, "it's how it works. People are now voting for Actomyr, or Vidi."

"But that's not fair to Renasphere!"

I took a deep breath, "If the first round of votes is anything to go off of, Renasphere would have lost the election regardless. It is as fair as we can make it. At least we're not doing anything that would smudge the votes, and allow someone without the popular vote to win. That would be insanely stupid." (Writer's note: I heavily, heavily dislike the Electoral college. It's messed up 5 times out of 59 elections. That's 8% of the time.)

I gestured for the dragon to go away, and they obliged. My thoughts trailed off, as I looked around, not really taking anything in. That was of course, until I saw a fight break out. Actually, less of a fight and more of a brutalization. Two fairly large ice dragons had attacked a much smaller snow dragon, seemingly unprovoked.

I grabbed onto the water in one of the dragons' blood, and threw them back, binding them to the ground with ice chains. I threw the other dragon off myself, and quickly turned to the dragon who had been attacked.

"Are you hurt?" I asked them.

They coughed, and a bit of blood came out, "obviously," they looked at a broken group of scales on their front-left leg, "I'm going to go get all that fixed. You know where the nearest hospital is?"

"We've got dragons who can fly you there," I gave the snow dragon directions to the medical transport group. I turned back to the perpetrators. I dragged them over to each other, and began questioning them. Apparently, the little dragon had voted for Actomyr. That was their only crime.

I sighed, and called over an officer. The two dragons were responsible for assault, and voter suppression. That would give them five or ten years. Not a long sentence, but certainly enough. (Writer's note: I just realized that a prison sentence for a dragon would be so different compared to a humans', because they can be a lot harsher (seeing as these dragons typically live for 700 years.)