4

At least I think it was tea. It was much to light in color to be coffee. Granted coffee was several different shades of dark brown, but this was simply too light to be coffee. I sat down slowly. Keeping one hand on my pet as my wing extended to wrap around Aurora as she sat next to me.

Aqua seemed to think about my request for a while before deciding to decline. Although it wasn't in words her emotions clearly told me her intent. She was rather easy to understand, and a much better pet then I expected. It wasn't as if I could have something as small, and frail as a domesticated dog or cat. Especially as I got older.

I was a dragon, and I would never stop growing throughout my thousand year lifespan. If I made it to a thousand years that is. Aqua was already quite old as far as wyverns went. She behaved well, but she still had several habits I didn't like. For example she would eat anything meat that fit into her mouth as soon as she got hungry, and she didn't always feel like hunting so she would randomly decide to try, and eat the people.

I had to keep a mental eye on her all the time whenever she started to feel hungry so she wouldn't eat any of the possible future citizens of our new little nation. She was one of the wyverns I planned on bringing with me simply because I couldn't make sure she didn't eat someone if I wasn't there to watch her. I dropped my head to look at Bryce.

"What did you want to show me?" I asked quietly.

As quietly as a dragon my size could anyone. Bryce startled. Clearly terrified by my sudden appearance because he hadn't noticed me until then. Bryce managed to avoid dropping his cup although I didn't know how, but my attention had already shifted over to the silent dwarves who apparently didn't know I could speak. I snorted casually before turning my attention back to Bryce.

As soon as Bryce managed to realize who I was he started getting really excited. Rushing over to a workbench on the opposite side of the room. I only had to shift my position to follow him over to the other side of the room. There Schnider is busy working on something, but that isn't what Bryce wants to show me. What I see on that table is several common electrical things that I'd seen a lot throughout my life before becoming a dragon.

A lightbulb, a remote controlled toy car, and a few other things like that. The car was so simple. One that just went forward, and back. All of these things wouldn't work in my presence. Mana glitched out anything that wasn't heavily insolated against mana surges.

My head cocked. I was confused as to why these simple little things were so important. Bryce held up the lightbulb first. It didn't have the same snaps I was used to seeing on the modern light bulbs, and the shape was a bit odd, but I looked at him expectantly waiting for whatever he planned to show me.

"Put some of your mana into the lightbulb," Bryce held it up to me.

I was a bit confused as to what he was trying to get at. Lightbulbs couldn't handle mana, and usually exploded in the presence of excess mana. The lightbulb was also an odd bluish color. In the end after a little thinking I decided to trust Bryce on this one. Copper was also watching excitedly.

It was clear that this excited him a great deal. I allowed a small amount of my mana to enter the lightbulb, and it lit up just like any normal light bulb. It was much brighter then the flare lights that just used fire crystals, and it didn't give off any heat. It could simply be placed, and charged up with mana. I allowed more of my mana to flow into the bulb, and I could feel the excess mana being expelled naturally by the material the bulb was made out of.

I pushed more mana into the bulb until I was forcing enough mana through to blow out the lights on a whole city block. The light started to flare brightly. Bryce nearly dropped the bulb as the mana began to feed back into his arm. I retracted all my mana at once. Checking his wounds carefully.

Aurora was already scanning him thoroughly, and had begun healing his arm. It didn't take her long to heal the burst veins, and broken skin. Her mana moved surprisingly gently. Bryce had barely flinched when she started healing him, and visibly relaxed as she healed him. He wiped the blood off his arm, and moved onto the toy car next.

He set the car down, and picked up the controller. Lowering the controller down to the car until the light on the car, and the light on the controller were the same color. Then he started fiddling with the joystick, and the car moved. It was common knowledge that mana, and technology didn't really mix so how was this working?

"How did you do this?" I didn't think Bryce was much of a tech head.

"I didn't make the tech," Bryce gestured over to Schnider, "I just made the wire."

Bryce held up a small roll of wire, and allowed me to take it. I could feel dragon scale mixed into this wire.

"This has dragon scale in it," I stated bluntly.

Schnider froze. He apparently didn't know that this wire had dragon scale in it.

"Yep," Bryce chuckled lightly, "Dragon scale is naturally both mana resistant, and mana conductive. Mix it with some cheap copper, and you get mana conductive wires. Rune magic combined with existing tech makes up the circuit board, and you have magic powered technology."

"What gave you the idea?" I cocked my head.