Chapter 79: 79. 10 Days Preparations

They had ten days.

That was how long Helena’s team needed to complete the initial processing of the forty-one survivors before repatriation could begin: medical clearances, documented accounts, coordination with beastfolk continental authorities. Ten days during which Owen and Yuki’s group were technically registered Association contractors on active assignment and needed to be findable.

Ten days was enough time to turn Yuki’s life inside out.

On the first day, she upgraded her apartment. Not drastically, she wasn’t ready for a mansion, and Owen’s presence in any space smaller than a warehouse was going to involve some creative furniture arrangement regardless of square footage, but she moved to a place in District Three with actual separate rooms and a ceiling high enough that his wings didn’t create a constant ambient danger to hanging light fixtures.

On the second day, she bought equipment. New katana sheaths with inventory integration. Better mana-channeling arm guards. A traveling coat with concealed space for Uru’s containment needs when the slime wanted to be carried rather than be in the beast space. She spent an afternoon in the district’s Hunter supply quarter and came home with six bags and the particular satisfaction of spending money on things that were both expensive and genuinely necessary.

Owen watched her unpack with an expression she had learned to read as approval-delivered-as-silence.

“You could also buy things,” she pointed out.

“I don’t need things” he said.

“You could buy furniture for Drak’thar.”

A look of realization dawned on his face. “…That’s a reasonable point.”

They spent the third day in Drak’thar.

Owen had been back twice since Dominus had granted him ownership, but always briefly, always alone. Bringing Yuki — and then discovering that Odessa had followed them through the portal with the energy of someone who had been waiting for this invitation and was not going to let it close before she walked through it — changed the texture of the place.

Owen had shared some information with the Odessa and Alfred now, he considered them to family even though he had never had one before. They had gone through so much with them that he didn’t want to always tiptoe around them when doing things, but he hadn’t told them everything. Not yet

“Whoa!” Odessa exclaimed.

The five floating islands hung in their familiar configuration in the pocket dimension’s impossible sky. Still empty. Still largely dead, the gardens that had bloomed during their first visit reduced to bare soil and dead roots. The palace where the Greater Dragons had received them stood silent.

But the Tower of Royals was still standing. And the Hatchery — offline according to the system, but structurally intact.

“It needs life,” Yuki said, standing on the central island’s edge and looking at the bare gardens. “Not just dragons eventually. Right now. Things growing.”

Owen stood beside her. “I know. I don’t have the mana to restart the Tower or the Hatchery yet. That needs the other two fragments of Dominus’s power. But the gardens—”

“I can do the gardens,” Odessa said, from ten feet away where she had been looking at everything with the focused attention of someone making lists in their head. “My Azure Sky is a sky element, but I know a plant mage who owes me a favour. And Alfred is — Alfred, you garden, don’t you?”

Alfred, who had followed them through the portal with the quiet inevitability of a tide, looked at the bare soil of the palace gardens and nodded thoughtfully. “I have some experience.”

“Of course, you do,” Odessa said.

Leah had not come through. She had looked at the portal when Owen opened it, assessed it with the wariness she applied to everything unfamiliar, and said she would wait. Owen hadn’t pushed. She had been through enough transitions recently.

On the fourth day, Leah asked about Owen’s dragon form.

They were in the new apartment, which Leah was occupying on the basis that she had nowhere else to go and Yuki had offered without making a production of it. Owen was in his humanoid form. Leah had been watching him with the evaluating attention she deployed constantly, but this was the first time she had asked a direct question.

“How big?” she said.

“In juvenile form? About the length of a city bus. Maybe slightly longer.”

“And you fit in here.”

He considered how to explain the transformation. “My full body is the real one. This is a compression.”

Leah processed this. “Lion-folk have something similar. Our battle forms are larger. More mass, more claw, more fang. But we don’t walk around in battle form because furniture becomes impractical.”

“Exactly,” Owen said.

A little silence passed. Comfortable enough that it surprised both of them.

“The Auric Savanna,” Owen said. “What should we know before we get there?”

Leah’s tail moved in a slow arc. This was, he had learned, her thinking gesture. “The three great clans don’t always agree. The Auric Pride, my mother’s, holds the central territory. The Ironmane Clan controls the eastern borders. The Dusk Claw runs the coast.” She paused. “A dragon arriving will be a significant event. Dragons haven’t come to the beastfolk continent in a very long time.”

“Since the extinction,” Owen said quietly.

“Since the extinction,” she confirmed. “You should be prepared for that to cause reactions. Not necessarily hostile ones. But significant ones.”

Owen thought about Dominus. About pocket dimensions and sealed wills and the two Story Dungeons that hadn’t appeared yet. About the fact that arriving on the beastfolk continent as the only living dragon was going to announce something he wasn’t fully ready to announce.

“Noted,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”

“That’s your approach to most things, isn’t it,” Leah said. It wasn’t quite a question.

“It’s worked so far.”

Her tail flicked. “So far,” she echoed.

—

On the seventh day, Agent Helena Ridge called.

“The files,” she said, without preamble. “We’ve begun serving warrants. Fourteen individuals across three districts. Two of them had protection details that we had to coordinate around.” A pause that carried the weight of a woman who had been awake for a significant number of consecutive hours. “The networks are older than Eckstein. We’re finding connections going back decades. It’s going to be a long case.”

“But you’re pursuing it,” Yuki said.

“Every single name. Every single one.” Helena’s voice was flat and certain. “It’s going to take time. Some of these people have lawyers who are very good at their jobs and resources to sustain lengthy defences. But the records are solid. Eckstein kept immaculate records.”

A dark irony, the meticulousness that had made the operation run efficiently was now the thing that would dismantle it.

“The survivors,” Yuki said. “Is the repatriation on track?”

“Day ten,” Helena confirmed. “We’ll coordinate the handoff at the continental transit hub in District One. From there, you’ll escort them to the port and onto the Association’s diplomatic vessel.” Another pause. “Goldberg. What you found in that dungeon — what your dragon found — that’s not something that happens without people looking the other way. A lot of people, for a long time. When this breaks publicly, it’s going to be significant.”

“Good,” Yuki said.

“Yes,” Helena agreed. “Good.”

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