Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

[What else?] Zach responded. [Even though dragons are usually solitary, dragon mages had to find a way to pass on their skills to a new generation. Otherwise, their traditions would never spread and would eventually die out. For that reason, all dragon mages occasionally take a young dragon as a student to pass on their teachings. Usually a dragon mage will only have one student at any particular time, but Oganj is more powerful and confident than most dragon mages. He currently has two students.]

Crap…

[Tree dragon mages…] he lamented. [Even if the two students were mere beginners, this is still bad news.]

Three dragons working together was already a cause for panic for most people – having them all be dragon mages as well made a terrifying group that would give even Zach and Zorian pause.

"Are you done talking to each other?" Jornak suddenly asked. "Just so you know, when I say I can get Oganj and his group work with me, I don’t just mean his two students. You see, Oganj has been making connections with other dragon mages, and even regular dragons. You may not know this, but human-dragon relations have been steadily becoming worse lately, what with Eldemar and other northern countries constantly pushing deeper into the wilderness with their colonists. As solitary as they are, dragons are still intelligent beings and they can see where this is going. Some of them have been wondering if they should temporarily band together to halt or at least divert human advances, and Oganj is something of a logical figure to rally around in that case. If he moves against Eldemar, there could be as many as 20, or even 30 dragons following behind him."

Zorian couldn’t help but twitch at the explanation. His first instinct was to dismiss Jornak’s claims are pure fiction, but… there were precedents for large-scale dragon attacks happening. Usually when humans attacked dragon nesting grounds or killed too many dragons in too short of a time, but still.

And 30 dragons? That would take an entire army to stop… except that an army was a lot less mobile than a group of 30 dragons, which meant Oganj’s group could advance practically unchallenged through Eldemar’s territory, laying waste to all they encountered and simply fleeing whenever they were confronted with a force big enough to deal real damage. It would take an entire group of ultra-powerful mages to counter such a flight of dragons, and assembling such a group would take months. If Eldemar was simultaneously suffering from assassinations of its prominent leaders and the entire continent was tethering on the brink of another war… it was questionable whether it would be assembled at all.

It was interesting, though. Some dragons had friendly relations with humans, but Oganj wasn’t one of them. Considering his antagonistic past with humanity, it couldn’t have been easy to convince him to work with Jornak. Still, Zach was adamant that the stone token in Jornak’s hands was Oganj’s calling card and was genuine. That meant he probably did reach some kind of agreement with the old dragon mage.

It was becoming apparent that, while Zach and Zorian had largely focused on accumulation of personal power and skills, Jornak had spent most of his time trying to investigate the various states and organizations in their surroundings in order to figure out how to manipulate them. Probably a smart decision, considering he wanted to enact some kind of grand change in the entire continent and possibly create his own version of Ikosian Empire with him on top. Personal power alone couldn’t do that.

Thinking on it some more, it was likely that Jornak’s focus on recruiting others to help him originated from pure necessity. If he had started off as a temporary looper, like Zorian suspected, it made sense that he was focused on trying to leverage people around him to accomplish his goals. He was not a master mage, and he’d had a limited amount of time to work with, his time had been sharply limited, so slowly training to become good enough to accomplish things himself had not been a possible option.

"You know, nothing you said really addresses my question from earlier," Zorian pointed out to Jornak. "Delaying the conflict until the summer festival does not benefit us in any way. You and Silverlake will die if you can’t release the primordial before the deadline, and you can only make an attempt on the day of the summer festival. So it makes sense that you want to postpone the conflict until then. However, Zach and me have every reason to push things and try to resolve things sooner. Nothing you said changes that. In the end, all you did was name a bunch of threats and tried to blackmail us into agreeing to a terrible deal."

"Yes, that’s entirely true," Jornak said calmly, nodding slightly at him in agreement. "The truth is I don’t think I can keep the conflict manageable at the rate it is going. It’s only been a few days, but we’re already raising red flags everywhere. At this rate, we’re going to end up dragging the Eldemarian government into it whether we want to or not. Not even the local mage guild, subverted as it is, can fully suppress what is happening. And if that happens, then the release of the primordial becomes all but impossible to pull off."

"You’re losing the fight and getting desperate," Zach said.

"I wouldn’t phrase it that way," Jornak said carefully. "But it is definitely true that I, and Silverlake here, are not in a good position. We made a deal with the primordial to release it or die, and we can’t weasel out of it. If we can’t release Panaxeth from his prison by the end of the month, everything else will become pointless. However, should everything really fall apart that severely, why wouldn’t I drag you all down along with me? If you drive me into a corner like that, I will obviously turn to destructive and extreme methods."

"Zorian is right. This is just brazen blackmail," Zach said flatly, frowning at the man in front of him.

"I’m just explaining my logic," Jornak said. "I think it makes perfect sense for me to escalate things if we continue down this path. In the current situation, Eldemar can do as they wish and focus on sorting out the situation in Cyoria at their leisure. Meanwhile, if I kick off another Splinter War, release hundreds of wraiths in all major cities, and get a group of dragons to lay waste to entire northern Eldemar… well, it just might give them more pressing matters to worry about. And a narrow chance to live is better than having no chance at all. Wouldn’t you agree?"

Zach and Zorian said nothing to that.

"See, I think you’re reasonable people," Jornak continued, undaunted by their silence and frosty glares. If anything, he grew more animated in his speech and mannerisms. "You didn’t immediate run off to inform the Crown about what is happening. You spared the life of Veyers, even though he was clearly connected to me in some way. You came to this meeting to see what I have to say. Therefore, I think you’re going to be reasonable about this. After all, even if you agree to this truce, you still have a high chance of stopping us in the end. Letting us delay the battle until the end of the month may be a little suboptimal for you, but it’s not a catastrophe. If you push me too far, we both lose."

"If the sides were reversed, would you take your own deal?" Xvim suddenly asked, interrupting his explanation.

Jornak hesitated for a moment, mouth open, before his mouth snapped shut and he shook his head.

"Not a chance," he admitted.

Silverlake laughed at the admission, a sharp cackling laughter that somehow looked more appropriate on her old withered form than on her current young one.

"Then how can you call it being reasonable?" Xvim probed further.

"Because you are not me," Jornak said. "I wouldn’t accept it because I wouldn’t care about the death and destruction, so long as I win in the end. I accepted this as a price for what I want to do a long time ago. You four? I’m guessing you are far more reluctant to make that sacrifice."