Wake Up Time

As Maelyn walked into Harmon's house she immediately went to the kitchen and grabbed the biggest pot he had as well as a wooden spoon. Curious Mikael asked her, "What do you need them for? Were you planning on making luch when we got back to the palace?"

"Oh no boy!" Maelyn replied with a gleefully malicious laugh, "I'm going to use it to play mister hungover Harmon a nice little tune!"

They then proceeded upstairs and, finding Harmon's room, Maelyn opened the door and started banging loudly on the pot while singing even louder, "WAKE UP! WAKE UP! YOU SLEEPYHEAD! IT'S TODAY!"

As Harmon rolled off of his bed painfully holding his pillows to his ears he yelled, "What kind of greeting is this?! And why are you even in my house?! I will FIRE whichever servant let you in!"

"I don't know WHY you would consider a simple little children's song to be so horrible when we have been singing it for so long that I can't even remember who sung it originally!" Maelyn laughed while still banging on the pot every time Harmon stopped grimacing in pain, "And as for getting in your house, you'd have to fire your FATHER because we told him we were coming and the attempts to wake you he made your servers try didn't even stir you. So you're gonna have to take that issue up with him due to him ordering your servants to leave the door unlocked for our entry."

"MY servants should still know that they must ask MY permission to follow my father's orders!" Harmon growled, "So I will STILL be disciplining them!"

"Well since you're SOOOO into discipline, you're gonna LOVE the discipline me and your father have devised for YOU!" Maelyn gladly informed him, "You see, being as I had told you YESYERDAY that we start work at DAWN and you didn't show, You will now be transferring ownership of one house for EVERY HOUR you are late each day from here on out!"

"WHAT?!?!" Harmon angrily yelled, "You are a foreigner and only CITIZENS can own property in Altinyn! So your 'punishment' cannot be enforced! So HA!"

Grinning evilly Maelyn informed him, "That is why I got here later than I did. Because I made sure to stop by your government's offices and apply for citizenship and had it approved before I came over to treat you to this show. So HA yourself!"

"Abjul!" Harmon angrily scolded, "WHY did you approve this foreigner's application?!"

"I was doing the job as you told me sir!" Abjul urgently told him, "I made sure to make her answer truthfully how she planned to help Altinyn and checked over EVERY line of her application for accuracy. But she had filled it out completely and had answered truthfully to all of my questions so I HAD to approve her!"

"Well then I will have to stop by the office on the way to the palace and use my superior position and rescind your approval!" Harmon said through gritted teeth, "because this CRETIN doesn't deserve the privilege of citizenship!"

"Sir, i feel I must inform you," Abjul told him knowing it would result in punishment, "but according to our constitution and laws, a king or queen are the only ones legally able to rescind citizenship."

"BOY!!!" Harmon shouted in anger, "Now that you have told this pesky mosquito of the legality of it I will be bound to transferring those durn houses to this girl! I warn you you troublemaker! If this girl EVER uses her citizenship to run for a seat in Congress I won't hesitate to remove you from office!"

"I am sorry sir," Abjul meekly replied, "I have only been trying to make madam Maelyn and her crew comfortable and welcome. especially those who have ancestors from Altinyn. "

"SON!" Harmon scolded, "We hired these people to do a job for us! We DIDN'T bring them here to be rolling out the carpet and giving everything away!"

"Well if your lazy butt could learn how to get up and out that bed BEFORE dawn, you wouldn't HAVE to give it away!" Maelyn told him with a wicked smile, "But I guess telling a servant to wake you up is just too physically exhausting for you to even THINK about! So you get mad at Abjul all you want but remember that i will continue to profit from you being unwilling to WORK in every way, shape, and form i can think of! now get dressed and get downstairs in TEN minutes or you will owe me ANOTHER house!"

"ABJUL!" Harmon angrily ordered his son, "take this CRETIN back to the palace RIGHT NOW! I will be there when i get there. NO SOONER!"

"Don't worry lazy butt." Maelyn gleefully told him, "I wouldn't want to rush you! I just wanted you to know WHY i will be GLADLY making those pockets lighter and thinner. So PLEASE feel free to take your time."

"ABJUL!" Harmon yelled, "LEAVE NOW!"

Grinning evilly, Maelyn cheerfully waved at Harmon and told him, "See you LATER!" as she turned and left his room on her way out of his house.

As they both got back out to the street Abjul asked her, "Ma'am, may I ask why you chose to make him give you some of the homes he owns when he is late?"

"Oh that is fairly simple and kinda obvious." Maelyn shared, "Over the years I have learned and now make use of the very simple idea of the way to truly get a rich politician's attention and make sure he corrects himself is to hurt his pocketbook. Once those pockets get lighter those ears get sharper and that attention gets focused in on what is causing their pockets to get lighter and start correcting the problem causing the funds to decrease."

"But I still don't understand why you chose the homes and are only making him give up one per hour." Abjul explained in confusion, "He owns over a million homes. Those five homes won't even make a dent in his earnings."

"I know." Maelyn giggled, "That's why I chose to go after the homes and kept the number low. He won't think nothing about it and is bound to keep shwing up late. His father however, will soon recognize my growing wealth as well as the growing number of independent families no longer beholden to his son and will see the changes I am making simply by taking advantage of their weaknesses. And, when he does, he will straighten your father up right away."

"But how will so few homes make so much of a difference when he owns millions?" Abjul wondered, "It would take you like over a dozen years to even get a tenth of them from him."

"Oh just wait and see, my boy, wait and see!" Maelyn encouraged as she stopped at the government offices. She went inside and informed one of the cashiers that she would be receiving the deeds to five or six of the local properties from Harmon and asked to have the ones he chose delivered to her that evening before continuing on back to the site.

Walking up she went to each of the teams to see how much progress each team had made. At most of the sites they were still looking at having to continue to dig for at least a week or two before they would be able to get to the items they were targeting. But at the last site she visited they were currently millimeters away from gaining access to what sounded like empty space.

As they finally cracked into the empty space, Maelyn hollered for one of the students to grab one of the drones they had available in the tent. A minute later she placed the drones' camera to be able to pick up what it could while holding a flashlight nearby to be able to also make out the small chamber before trying to gain entry so as not to damage anything without knowing about it ahead of time.

Looking at the screen that showed what the drone's camera could see they were amazed to see that the hollow space was in the shape of what might be a dragon and, in the center of the hollow space was the dead body they had been trying to reach along with what appeared to be a Jade talisman in the shape of a dragon. Seeing the talisman, Maelyn proposed, "I wonder if that talisman had been protecting the owner by projecting some type of dragon shaped protective field before the owner would have died of asphyxiation?"

"But how would that small talisman project a field that large?" Joseph doubted, "besides, this happened five hundred looong years ago! They didn't know about the technology to project force fields way back then. And please tell me you don't believe it was magic! Cause we all know that every tale of magic we have heard about so far has shown to be explained by a natural scientific phenomena and NOT magic!"

"THAT my boy," Maelyn admonished, "is why we're gonna fill that hole up with some foam spray and dig out around it so we can get a better idea of what went on here before we jump to ANY conclusions!"