Hopping Celestial Fox

“Greetings, goddesses and their friends,” the words… no, the pure information echoed in my head.

I stumbled back as it hit my mind. Everyone did, in fact. Everyone except Casey, who had probably expected it.

“Oh, shit… What the…” Frank whispered.

“Hello… Mr. Cradence,” Casey replied, managing to keep the shaking out of her voice. “We apologize for trespassing… but it’s an emergency.”

The massive scaled beast stared at her with sharp eyes before closing them and blowing air through his nostrils.

“I suppose this is how others must feel when I use seeker arts on them,” he groused, managing to convey exasperation and curiosity through his speaking magic.

I winced as it hit me again, but I was better prepared for it this time so it wasn’t as bad.

It was really weird that he wasn’t even opening his mouth to ‘speak’, although part of me was glad that I didn’t have to look at his giant maw probably filled with teeth.

“You know everything about me despite the fact that we’ve never met,” the dragon continued, opening his eyes and staring at Casey again, who kept standing in place like a statue, looking up at him. “More importantly, I can see it in all of your thoughts. You created not just me, but this entire world, and are yourself from another world. You are a true goddess. Nothing like the sham deities worshiped by the lesser races.”

I was starting to get used to the sensation. The oddest thing was that I didn’t need to parse what he’d said whatsoever. I instantly knew exactly what he was trying to convey despite needing a moment to recover from being hit by it.

On that note, Cradence apparently already knew everything about Casey in return… There had never been any chance of us hiding the fact that Casey had created this world, had there?

“It is true that I’ve… created this world… but it was Renee who brought it to reality,” Casey deflected, making the dragon refocus on me instead.

I stiffened as my eyes met his.

“I…” I swallowed, trying to get my thoughts in order. “I haven’t really done anything… I still don’t really know what these portals are or… why only I can see them…”

The dragon stared at me for a little while longer before blowing more air through his nostrils – in what I belatedly realized had to be an equivalent of a sigh or a grunt – and lowering his head closer to me.

“You are an enigma, Renee Chrona. It’s the first time I’ve met someone I haven’t been able to read at all,” he conveyed, surprising me. “Your goddess friend and your mother are only partially unreadable, but your mana is utterly undecipherable.”

I stared at him in mild shock, not sure what to say.

“The others all believe you are the primordial goddess and the one who granted Cassandra Warren her own status of godhood.”

“I…” I remembered the dream Mom had told me about. “I don’t think I’m the… primordial goddess. Someone had… passed these powers on me, I think.”

“Someone?” The dragon’s eyes flicked to Mom and then back.

“Yes… It was… the dream,” I said in explanation.

But his eyes narrowed in what I assumed to be confusion.

“Dream?”

I blinked in surprise. Did he not know? Couldn’t he read all our thoughts about it?

“Yes… Mom had a… a dream when she was pregnant with me. Someone spoke to her… and implied that I was their child and told Mom to take care of me.”

There was a moment of silence, which only made me more and more nervous.

“I see…” he finally replied before raising his head again.

“Do you…” I said before mentally trying to back out of the sentence, but it was too late. “Do you… know something? About that person…?”

I didn’t even know what I was asking. Casey had created him and knew everything he did. There was no way he had any more of a clue than she did.

“I do not,” he confirmed. “But I suspect that this mysterious person had to have reasons to put you where they did. Did they say something else?”

“They said that they didn’t have much time left… and then disappeared,” Mom added.

More air blew through the dragon’s nostrils with a low humming growl.

“Then I have two theories. One is that it was for your protection.”

“Protection…?”

“If you are this mysterious person’s child, and they were faced with some kind of danger, they might have wanted to put you somewhere safe. Into a place where you wouldn’t be found by whatever danger they were facing.”

That seemed plausible… but something didn’t feel quite right about it. If it was true, then was I just meant to sit still and… what? Wait for them to pick me up again when the danger has passed? Why give me the ability to see portals into fictional worlds, then?

“The other theory is that you have a mission. This mysterious person wants you to accomplish something to help combat the danger, but they failed to tell you what.”

A mission… That felt more believable. But then, why wouldn’t they tell me what I needed to do?

“By the way, uh,” Frank interrupted. “All of this mysterious theorizing is cool and all, but weren’t we on a time limit?”

That shook me out of my contemplations.

“Right! We… We need to stop the zombie plague before it’s too late!”  My head whipped around and my eyes quickly made contact with everyone else.

The dragon growl-sighed again.

“Of course. Your primary purpose in coming here. You want me to hand over some of my dangerous magical tools.”

I winced. He’d conveyed that information with a bit of accusation.

“We can trade,” Casey proposed. “I know you’re a researcher at heart and we have a lot of items that might interest you.”

“A trade, you say…” Another growl-huff. “There are few things you have that I would be interested in. None of them match the value of the tools you want from me, however.”

Dammit… Were we really haggling with a dragon?

“You’re not even using them…” Casey quietly mumbled. Cradence probably wasn’t meant to hear it, but he could still tell what Casey was thinking. She seemed to realize it a moment later. “I…I mean. Is there anything else you might want…? As this world’s creator, I have a bit of a pull…”

Cradence narrowed his eyes as he stared at Casey. She did her best not to falter under his gaze.

After a few tense moments, he turned around, walked to a corner of the room, lifted up his massive claw, and rummaged through the various items piled there.

Casey and I exchanged a half-confused half-hopeful look at his actions.

Finally, he seemed to have found what he was looking for, and lifted it up in his claw for us to see.

It was a misshapen spiky white crystal pulsating with light. The glow inside it seemed to almost dance as it constantly moved.

“This is the divine crystal,” he began explaining, before looking straight at me. “It’s only called that. It has nothing to do with gods like you.”

I blinked but gave him a nod, unsure of how to react to that.

“This is… what I edited into the story yesterday… It’s what we’re looking for,” Casey murmured.

The dragon eyed her again.

“It’s made out of a rare mineral only found deep underground near the world’s core and has the unique property of cleansing one’s body and restoring it to its proper state when used correctly,” he explained, glancing at Elyssa.

Restoring one’s body into its proper state… That sounded a lot like…

“It is something I made a long time ago but could never perfect it.” He paused. “I want to study the phenomenon that would let me perfect it.”

“You want to study the true form skill,” Elyssa concluded with a nod.

The dragon nodded back. It looked a bit funny with his head many times larger than Elyssa’s.

“In exchange for giving you this crystal, I want some of you to stay with me and let me study how you use this so-called ‘true form skill’.”

“Stay… with you…?”

I had a bad feeling about this.

“Elyssa Grandoul and Emily Chrona.”

He wanted Mom?! Why?!

“Me?” Mom echoed my thoughts, sounding startled. “I understand Elyssa, since she is the expert on the matter, but why me?”

The dragon’s sharp eyed pierced Mom.

“You are also a curious case, Emily Chrona. A parent of the primordial goddess, yet only a partial goddess yourself. Seemingly the catalyst for everything, yet completely oblivious, until recently.”

Mom shuffled uncomfortably at Cradence’s analysis.

Also, hold on. Partial goddess? When had that happened?

“But to me, the most curious thing is your true form. Why do you have draconic features? Does it have anything to do with my own race, or is it a mere coincidence?”

I blinked.

Oh… Now it made sense. He wanted to study Mom specifically because she was a dragon. But… That…

“I… don’t know? I didn’t particularly think of myself as a dragon before yesterday…”

The dragon nodded again.

“And that is exactly why I want to study you and your form.”

I grit my teeth. We really needed that crystal if we wanted to stop the zombie apocalypse. But I didn’t just want to leave Mom with this dragon…

“How… long would that take?” Mom asked, making me look at her in surprise. “I… have to go back to work in a few days.”

Cradence huffed again.

“Then until you need to return, I want you to stay.”

Mom hesitated for a moment before steeling herself.

“Alright.”