2215 Real Strength (Part 1)

"Wait a second. What about me?" Elina asked.

"What about you?" Salaark replied with a snort.

"I kind of feel left out." Everyone but her and Senton were still fully human.

"I guess you don't want to be the Senton of the situation." Rena's husband sighed deeply.

"Oh, no sweetie, that's not what I meant."

"Please, covering it up just makes it worse. There's no need to worry about me. I've long since gotten used to being constantly in the middle of a storm I don't even understand and against which I'm more helpless than my baby girl."

Yet his voice and words didn't match as he kept sighing like a bellows. The idea that Leria's magic could already wipe the floor with him and that her steed could eat him in one gulp were both huge blows to his father's pride.

The bright-colored feathers that now decorated her skin were just the fire on the literal Phoenix.

"You are a Red Dragon, child, and I'm no Dragon." Salaark shrugged.

"Thanks anyway." Elina sighed.

"That's not what I meant. I'm far from the Senton of the situation." The Guardian replied.

"Hey, I resent that!" Rena and Senton said in unison.

"Come on, Shargein. Be a dear and say Dad. Say Dad." Salaark ignored them and focused her eyes on the adorable muzzle of the wyrmling.

"Da." Of course, a one-day old creature couldn't talk yet a single syllable was more than enough to summon an overprotective father.

"You heard him! He said Dad! That was his first word!" Leegaain appeared out of thin air, snatching the child from Salaark's arms and replying to his cooing in Dragontongue.

"Sure, that was definitely a word and not an attempt to mimic my voice." The Overlord said with a sneer. "Your daughter here feels left out."

Leegaain looked at Salaark as if she was mad until he followed her finger pointing at Elina. Then, since he still looked baffled, the Overlord forced him to take his eyes off Shargein and look at the rest of the room.

"I see." Leegaain had to cover his hand in scales and touch Elina's face to find and trigger her dormant bloodline with his breathing technique, Worldkeeper.

Several red and yellow-veined orange scales appeared over one-third of her skin, making her gasp in surprise.

"I thought I was a Red Dragon or something." She pointed at the orange scales.

"You are." Leegaain nodded. "The red ones are yours while the rest belongs to your baby girl."

The room exploded into cheers and applauses before the Father of all Dragons could finish congratulating Elina.

"Oh gods, another girl!" Raaz said. Leegaain confirming Salaark's prediction left no room for error.

"What do you mean, another?" His wife snarled at him. "Aside from Lith, our sons were a handful and we have three of them. We had only two daughters and they are all wonderful. This is just evening the score."

"I don't want to be the Trion of the situation!" Aran pouted, considering himself a paragon of virtue just a step below his favorite brother.

"Don't you dare repeat those words ever again, young man! Trion went through a lot and it's a miracle having him with us again." Raaz said before turning toward Elina. "You know what, thank the gods it's another girl."

***

Lith and Kamila were still staring at each other in silence when suddenly red-veined black feathers popped out of their skin, turning their worried expressions in the adorable stare of a big, fluffy creature.

"What the heck is that?" Kamila burst into a peal of laughter while pointing her finger at Lith. The crown of feathers on his head only made his dumbfounded face more comical.

"I could ask you the same question. You should look at your face." Lith laughed as well while conjuring a mirror from the tower and handing it to her.

"Good gods, I look like a plushie." She started to laugh harder.

The feathers disappeared after a while, but it took them even longer to stop laughing.

"What do you think happened?" Kamila asked.

"Off the top of my head, I think that Grandma must have activated Blood Imprint for some reason and we got caught in the middle." He shrugged.

"But I'm not a- The baby! She's like you. Fire and darkness affinities." She said in amazement.

"Well, for now. I mean, she's just a little over two months old. She might gain more growing up and end up like Friya." Lith noticed that Kamila didn't seem scared by the experience or by the revelation and he wanted to keep things that way.

"By the way, we should really start thinking about a name. We can't keep calling her 'her, our daughter, the baby' and so on. It makes her feel less than a person." He quickly changed the topic to give Kamila the opportunity to take a step back from the conversation and take her time to think.

"On that note. We should better go get breakfast. By now the others must be as worried as hungry."

Lith turned around, opening a Gate that would lead them right in front of the dining room's door when Kamila grabbed his arm.

"Wait a second, I also have something to tell you."

'Fuck me sideways. The fact that she didn't say "we need to talk" is a good sign, but not by much.' He thought while dispelling the portal and turning to face her.

"Do you remember what I told you a few days ago, when I asked you to take part in the mission to infiltrate the Golden Griffon?" Kamila asked.

"Yes. Word by word." He nodded.

"Really? With that Lich-like memory of yours?" Seeing her joking and chuckling lifted his spirit.

"Yes, even with this Lich-like memory of mine." Lith used a mind link to replay the whole conversation.

"Well, this makes things easier for me." She sighed in relief and then tensed up again, clenching her hands in a way that made Lith think to have jinxed everything. "I know that not much time has passed but I've made my decision."

There was no warmth in her gaze or expression anymore, making Lith curse Jirni for having trained Kamila so well. He gritted his teeth and waited for the blow.

"While I was waiting for you and Solus in the capital and during our stay in the Desert, I spent most of the time thinking about how to make sense of who you are and if I could bring myself to look at you like I did before discovering that you come from Earth.

"I would like to say that the birth of Salaark's baby and the Dragon Dance helped, but they made things just more confusing for me. I'm not going to lie, until this morning, until we had this very conversation, I was still at square one.

"Only now have I realized that Solus was right and more importantly, that I was right all along." Lith had no idea what Solus had to do with their situation, but he kept his mouth shut and swallowed his questions, still hoping for a happy ending.

"No matter if your name is Derek McCoy or Lith Verhen, you truly are the bravest man that I know."