"What?! Is that why you’ve turned into a worm?!" Riley blurted, his tiny dragon head shaking far too fast for soone with a developing spine.
"A worm?! I am still a snake!" Thyrran snapped back, scales puffing indignantly. "I simply lost access to the sa amount of mana. That does not an I turned into another creature entirely!"
The fat, glossy serpent reared up, or at least attempted to. It made him look like an angry caterpillar trying to lecture a lizard, but the indignation was definitely there.
Riley blinked at him.
The serpent looked personally offended.
Thyrran hissed the draconic equivalent of a tired sigh. "This appearance is because of the unusual situation that brought all the necessary conditions together. Nothing more."
Riley tilted his tiny dragon head. "And those conditions are...?"
Thyrran stared for a beat, then began explaining like a teacher who already regretted taking the job.
"First, remind yourself what breaks a draconic seal. In most cases, a seal is undone by fulfilling its criteria. In your case, death. Another way is for the caster to untangle it themselves. And the last would be for soone stronger to break it by force."
Riley scratched his cheek with a confused claw because he felt he was still sowhat alive. "Okay... then what happened with ?"
"In your case," Thyrran said, his tone growing flatter, "what likely triggered the unsealing was the blood sigil you had before. But using blood externally only works to the extent of inserting the correct key. It does not turn it."
"The blood sigil?!" Riley squawked. "But how could the seal have been that hard to break if a blood sigil was enough to start it?"
Thyrran eyed him as if he had asked why the sky was not made of gold. "For one, since when did dragon lords give out blood sigils to humans? And if they had attempted it, how many would have survived? Also, how could a mortal end up in such close proximity to dragons in the first place when humans back then were barely able to think of anything beyond survival?"
Riley opened his mouth, then closed it. He had no counterargunt for that.
"And yet here you are," Thyrran continued. "Clearly proving that wrong. But you must realize that the sigil did not break the seal. It only allowed your body to accept what should never have been accepted by a mortal. Dragon blood."
Riley’s tiny wings stiffened. "Right. Dragon blood."
He blushed. Spectacularly. His scales flushed even darker, rembering exactly how that blood had made it into his system. Via mouth. Via kiss. With Kael. For the first ti.
"Specifically, the blood of the current dragon lord."
"Even with the number of black dragons who helped create the seal and the layers of complexity they built into it, it would still struggle to hold against the blood of the current lord. It is not only a matter of strength, but of the natural authority he carries after completing the rite of succession."
Thyrran either did not notice or pretended not to see Riley’s wiggling. "At so point, you must have gotten dragon blood directly into your system. Because by the ti the dragon lord returned with you in tow, half-dead even with all those allegedly functioning organs, we could already see signs of the seal weakening."
Riley coughed violently. "Yes, well. Things happened."
Thyrran continued as if Riley had not just combusted emotionally. "From the mont that seal had been keyed, it would not have been surprising if you began manifesting draconic characteristics. And you would have continued to do so for as long as you had access to his blood and mana."
Riley’s eyes widened. "Then the regular bloodletting?"
"You needed it because your body probably overreached," Thyrran explained.
"Your body had begun unsealing, but it wouldn’t have started unraveling at such a rate if there had been no need to use mana. But then the ball started rolling, and it couldn’t be stopped. And so the body that had been desperate to transform started drawing mana from a body that didn’t even have a dragon heart. As a human, you would never have been able to supply that yourself."
Riley swallowed. "Is that why I kept on needing more and more blood from Kael?"
Thyrran nodded solemnly. "Yes. Because your body refused to stop the unsealing process, and without that, your body would’ve started eroding."
Thyrran nodded and continued, "But that would have only allowed you to live while being severely tethered to him. However, that was also the only reason why I had been able to inform him about using blood. Because it was not to break the seal but to give you a temporary lease on life."
Riley stared at him, stunned beyond belief.
A temporary lease of life?
It was impossible not to be gobsmacked by sothing that insane because clearly he had just been buying his lifespan with Kael’s literal blood.
He felt chills crawl down his scales.
He would’ve been eternally dependent on Kael like he was so blood bank.
Thyrran waited patiently as the dragonling experienced an existential collapse.
After several seconds, Riley squeaked, "Then how co it turned out like this?"
The ex-guardian regarded him quietly for a mont, then said, "Because you insisted on returning. But that would have been impossible without getting a dragon heart."
Riley blinked. "So are you saying I have a dragon heart now?"
"Yes. It was a gamble. A difficult one. But one I believed only I could take. Because that gamble required stopping your heart, waiting for it to rebuild and restart using the stored blood of the dragon lord in your body, then unfreezing your other organs so you could retain your existing body."
Riley’s wings stiffened because that was certainly a mouthful.
Thyrran added, "An isolated restart. You had to be resuscitated at the right mont before the seal decided it was ti to return you to the beginning."
The black dragonling gasped.
Because now that Thyrran said it out loud, he rembered the pain. The sudden stop. The nothingness. The sharp, violent thump. And how it felt like he was being dragged back into existence.
"So the reason you bit like that was to stop my heart?" he asked in awe, staring at the little snake.
"Yes," Thyrran replied plainly. "It was sothing unique to . One fang would release venom while the other would release antivenom."
Riley stilled. He stared at the tiny creature in front of him and then rembered the massive, terrifying serpent whose presence had nearly made him faint earlier. And yet that sa being had done sothing that tedious... and dangerous... for him.
Riley swallowed, overwheld.
"Is that... is that why you got removed from the archives?" he asked softly.
Thyrran flicked his tail.
Riley imdiately felt guilty. "I’m so sorry. I thought maybe it was because you were forced to interfere with the trials. I an, proctors probably aren’t allowed to attack candidates regardless of the situation. If there’s a way to appeal it, I’ll try—"
Thyrran cut him off. "It was not simply attacking during a trial. By then, the trial was already over. You had already succeeded."
Riley blinked.
Thyrran continued, "What got removed was the fact that once a guardian becos a familiar, it becos impossible to remain an impartial archive guardian."
Riley stared at him.
"???"
"A familiar?" he asked slowly.
"Yes," Thyrran said. "Using both venoms on soone is how a serpent guardian like swears allegiance."
Riley’s pupils shrank.
"And for your information," Thyrran added dryly, "the sole reason I look like this right now is that instead of drawing from the archives’ mana, my only mana source is yours. So this worm-like form is currently only thanks to your mana pool, young master."
Riley froze.
Then his eyes widened comically.
"!!!"
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