Sera had arranged their invitation to the shamans hall by the following morning, which said sothing about either her efficiency or how much the shamans had wanted this eting.
The Shamans’ Hall was in the old city, where four thousand years of continuous habitation were visible in the way the streets narrowed, the stone deepened in color, and the buildings stopped attempting to be impressive and simply were, as very old things do.
The Hall itself was not an impressive structure. It was long and low, made of the sa pale stone as Vashari’s oldest parts, and had a living roof—actual vegetation growing from soil laid over the ceiling, maintained in a way that suggested it had been done so for a long ti.
The Dragon Shrine was beside it.
Owen stopped when he saw it.
It was modest in the sense that things were occasionally modest; they weren’t ostentatious or grandiose, but they were obviously taken care of with honest concern. A platform of carved stone.
On it, a sculpture that he recognized after a mont as an attempt to render a dragon’s form by people who had been working from descriptions and mory rather than direct observation.
It was flawed; the scale pattern was a guess, and the wing proportions were a little wrong. However, the carving’s level of attention to detail was evident. Soone had put a lot of effort into getting it making it look correct.
Around the base of the platform were fresh offerings. Flowers he didn’t recognize. Small stones arranged in patterns. Sothing that appeared to be food.
"The food is changed every day," Sera said quietly. "So it’s always fresh."
Owen stood in front of the shrine for a long mont.
He thought about Dominus. About a Dragon King who had spent his last three minutes before extinction casting his essence into the future and trusting it would find sowhere worth landing.
About a thousand years of empty shrines and maintained prayers and beastfolk shamans who had kept the faith for generations without any evidence that it would ever be rewarded.
He did not have a na for what he felt. It was sowhere between gratitude and responsibility and a weight that he was becoming practiced at carrying. the weight of responsibilities that ca with great power, that ca with being... a King.
He placed his hand on the shrine’s carved stone surface for a mont. Then he followed Sera into the Hall.
---
There were seven shamans within.
They ranged in age from what appeared to be a young adult wolf-folk woman to an elderly lion-folk man who moved with the deliberation of extre age that had not diminished into frailty but had simply beco very intentional steps.
They were seated in a semicircle on woven mats, and they were all looking at Owen with an expression he was starting to recognize as the expression of people encountering sothing that confird a very old belief.
He sat across from them with Yuki on his right and Leah on his left. Alfred and Odessa had remained at the Hall’s entrance at Owen’s suggestion, this felt like a conversation that should not begin with too much audience.
The eldest shaman spoke first. He identified himself, through Sera’s translation of the formal dialect, as Elder Thorn: which was clearly a title rather than a na, though the distinction didn’t seem to matter much at the mont.
"The prayers have been answered," Elder Thorn said. "We did not know if we would live to see it."
"I should tell you..." Owen started carefully, "...that I am not what the prayers imagined. I’m not an emissary or a divine answer. I am just another being with limitations and uncertainties and things I’m still trying to understand."
"Yes," Elder Thorn said, with the patience of soone who had anticipated this kind of hedging. "That is what the prayers anticipated."
Owen paused. "Excuse ?"
"We did not pray for a perfect being sent by the cosmos to solve our problems. We prayed for a dragon to co back to the world. A true one, with a real presence in it."
The old man’s eyes were sharp and deeply patient. "The prayers were always modest in what they asked. We are a simple folks."
Leah chuckled a little.
"I was told that the shamans..." Owen said, "...call the Will of the World the Devourer."
At this mont, the quality of attention in the semicircle sharpened imdiately.
Several of the shamans exchanged worried glances with the controlled speed of people registering surprise but choosing not to show it fully.
"That is sacred knowledge," Elder Thorn said carefully. "Not shared outside ritual contexts."
"I know. I’m not asking how you know it. I’m telling you that I know it too, and why." Owen t the elder’s gaze. "The Dragon King told , before he passed on his legacy. The Devourer is what it is. And what I’m trying to build is sothing that exists outside of its reach."
He told them about Drak’thar. Not everything though, not the technical details of the Dragon King System or the specifics of the Will’s awakening cycle. But the shape of it.
A pocket dinsion outside the Devourer’s monitoring. A place where dragons could exist again without being subject to deletion.
The possibility of sothing genuinely different from the current arrangent.
The shamans listened.
They listened with the specific quality of people who had been waiting a very long ti for relevant information and were now receiving it and processing it with the seriousness it deserved.
When Owen finished, Elder Thorn was quiet for a long mont.
"The Story Dungeon," the old man said finally.
Owen stilled. "Yes?"
"We have a na for them. The Remberings." Elder Thorn’s eyes were steady.
"Places where the past bleeds through into the present. Wounds in ti that speak." He paused.
"There has been a Rembering building in the eastern territories for approximately six months. We have been watching it. It has not yet fully manifested."
Owen’s Mana Sense wanted to expand at maximum range imdiately but He controlled the impulse.
"The eastern territories," he said. "The Ironmane Clan’s land."
"Yes," Elder Thorn said sternly.
"Is that why the Ironmane sent a representative to intercept us in the market yesterday?" Yuki asked.
"Possibly," the elder said. "The Ironmane have been....changed, these past months. Their new leadership makes decisions that the other clans find difficult to anticipate."
He looked at Owen. "There are things happening in the eastern territories that we would appreciate a dragon’s perspective on."
"What kind of things?"
Elder Thorn was quiet for a mont. "Things that sll, to those of us with the old knowledge, like the Devourer’s interests. But also, sothing else. Sothing that does not fit our existing categories."
Owen thought about Azmireth. About her purple skin , black horns, little butt and her sensual voice.
"I think I can guess what it is," he said.
"Hmm, Sothing..." Elder Thorn added, "...that has not been seen... or felt here in a very long ti."
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