Chapter 561: Dragon’s Choice

"Holy stars..." Arc gasped. "Look at them all..." She saw threads coming from each egg, one or two for each egg disappearing upward, but for all of them, every other thread seemed to be trapped within a sphere surrounding the eggs, oddly motionless compared to the ones moving upward through the ceiling, which drifted lightly. Looking up, she made out the outline of a single, massive dragon.

"Impressive, yeah? These are just the mature eggs, those ready to hatch. The stands keep them in stasis. Bet you’re wondering why we keep them all here, unhatched."

Arc suspected she knew the answer, that hatching even half of these eggs would exhaust Norneau’s ability to feed and house them, much less give them space to grow, but she nodded politely.

"The spells aren’t just for stasis. They enable the dragons to dream in connection with their mother’s experience, and thus, when they do hatch, they have some idea of what’s expected of the bond and how to choose a partner. Normal dragons don’t have that. The magic also temporarily accelerates their growth to adulthood, taking only a couple of years instead of decades. With all the food they need, obviously, we can’t have them all out and about. With Knight Sorrel’s explanation, her ideas were confirmed, but then they added, wistfully, "It’s the best deal the city could give us, considering..."

"Considering what?" Arc asked.

Knight Sorrel shook their head. "Don’t mind me, I thought you might know," they rubbed their chin. "Let’s get on with the choosing. What you’ll do is walk up to as many eggs as you’re willing, within an hour, and give them a touch. If the dragon inside makes a connection, you’ll get sent upstairs with them. If not, you’ll be asked to leave, and the terms of the nondisclosure contract will apply, including a small memory wipe. Nothing major, but we’ve found over the years that it helps with the pain. Gives people time so that when they do remember, they won’t do anything rash."

Arc gulped. Maybe she shouldn’t have skimmed the contract...

Amongst the eggs, a few earlier candidates were reaching out, touching eggs before moving on. There was a desperate edge to a few of their faces, and Arc realized they were all in the rows close to the wall, amongst the smaller eggs.

"What if more than one dragon connects with me?" Arc asked.

"Not going to happen. Dragon Knights only get one dragon, so if you accept one choice you can’t get another. Even in the egg, no dragon will try to form a connection over another’s. Now, if a dragon or their rider dies, they can possibly form a connection with someone new, but it’s rare. You are, of course, free to reject a dragon’s choice, but if no other dragon chooses you... Nobody’s ever gotten re-chosen after rejecting a dragon."

"Right..." Only one chance... Arc felt an anxious weight settle in her gut.

Knight Sorrel turned and left, leaving Arc with the other candidates, under the stern watch of a half-dozen Dragon Knights with full arms and armor, and the eggs.

Arc wondered how she should begin. There were a few pedestals missing eggs, and most of them were in the middle rings, with only one of the larger pedestals unoccupied. Looking closely at the eggs themselves, she saw that most of the ones in the outer rings were the brown, leathery eggs of leaftails, and the yellow and lightly striped eggs of spiketails, all about the size of her head.

Part of her wanted to start with the largest eggs. She spotted one scaly mistwing egg and a few orange-banded eggs that belonged to heavensreds, and the two smallest amongst the large eggs were the black eggs of nightshadows, though one had a grey mark on its surface that made her wonder if it had experienced some sort of accident. Arc’s favorite Dragon Knight, Aiden, was one of two nightshadow riders, the other being his partner, Johan.

With a deep breath, Arc began from the back. Approaching near to a Knight, she smiled up at the female elf only to receive a stern, humorless look back. Of course they’d have a bit of a stick up their butts about guarding all these eggs... Turning away from her, Arc reached out and placed a hand into the sphere of protective magics surrounding a leaftail, shuddering a bit as the circulating threads passed through her hand.

The mind she felt was... immature. Too young to have learned much from its mother through the magic that linked them. It regarded Arc’s presence like a cat assessing whether a smaller creature was food. Before it could decide, Arc pulled her hand away, and a noise from the other side of the room drew her attention as one of the other candidates started raising his voice at a Dragon Knight.

Arc couldn’t catch what was said, other than the demand for another chance, before the elf was physically grabbed and pushed into a closet-sized space containing a teleportation circle. A moment later, a flash and a collapsing vertical warp in space sent the elf on his way, ejecting him from the building, if Arc’s guess was correct.

Jolts of fear rose from the remaining candidates, and Arc felt through the threads that the Knights’ wariness only increased.

Egg after egg, Arc’s touch confirmed either immaturity or an unwillingness to bond, which came through as a hazy disinterest more than rejection. She quickly finished the outer two rings before arriving at the middle rings, where the rejections became more pronounced, if not downright hostile.

Around what felt like her two-hundredth egg, she noticed Knight Sorrel with Snow and Margaret. Staring at them caused her to miss the moment that a dwarven candidate in the outer ring found her egg, which was a spiketail egg that Arc had touched and passed over. She saw the threads of connection between egg and future-rider wrapping between the two as a Knight took her to the stairway opposite the entrance, where she would continue her rise through the tower.

Arc pushed down her jealousy and kept going. Egg after egg. Then a sudden squeak and a cry of "Oh beans!" drew her out of her latest failure as Snow looked like she was about to faint.

It was the mistwing egg, and Arc grinned widely at seeing the happy tears in her friend’s eyes. Sure, it was the rarest egg there and one that Arc wished for herself, but if anyone deserved a dragon, it was Snow, and Arc paused her own search to go over and congratulate her friend.

"I-I’m..." Snow sniffed heavily, gasping and hugging the egg that was the same size as her. "... so happy..." Even the pair of knights who came to escort her and the egg upstairs wore smiles on their faces. Margaret ignored the proceedings, walking slowly through the rows without reaching for a single egg.

Once Snow was gone, Arc kept her smile as she decided to take a gamble on the largest eggs. Touching a heavensred egg, she found the thoughts of the dragon within centered around reliving the hunting experiences of its mother, reveling in dreams of ripping and tearing through deer and bears and other prey, not just for eating but for play. Before Arc could withdraw, the dragon turned its attention to her and sent a demand that arose more as understanding rather than words.

Powerful enough... for prey. I will choose you if you give me blood... Through the threads, the substrate of its thoughts came to her, thoughts of burning and consuming, of burning her if she proved weak, of polishing its scales with her blood... Darkness and fire and blood...

"No!" Arc stepped back, her hands snapping away from the egg. Her cry caught the attention of the guards, but as she wasn’t threatening any of the eggs, they remained at their posts. She needed a moment to recover. The first dragon to choose her was a murderous, narcissistic creature.

One of the other candidates, a birdkin who resembled some sort of hawk, scoffed at her display as Arc worked to calm her rapid breathing. They touched one last egg before a Knight called out, "Grigary Piscam. Your hour is up. I’m sorry, but-"

"Yeah, I’m going," the now-former candidate said bitterly, making for the threshold of the teleporter.

Arc wondered how much time she had left before deciding that she would try the remaining large eggs first.

Not wanting a repeat of the murderously-minded encounter, she skipped over the heavensreds and tried the first of the nightshadows. Inside the unmarked egg, she felt a mind regard her, its intent clear. It knew the world it was in, the world around Norneau, was small, from the connection it shared with its mother. It would not choose until the world was big enough to be worth exploring.

She felt a resonance with this dragon, the similarity of their desires to see a vast and open world. To explore without obligation or ties holding her back. But trying to share this through her contact with the threads brought only a decisive rejection. This dragon would not go back on their choice. They would not choose her.