Chp.16: First negotiation (part 2)

Even though Haku was quite calmed by seeing his brother well, and even though he had come there with the aim of finding out as many things as possible, his main concern was still knowing how to free Rhaegal. Now he could no longer hold back: he wanted to know what the king's intentions were and he wanted to know immediately. If the price hadn't been too steep, he would have even considered paying it immediately.

For Haku, nothing was more important than family, not even himself. Family was everything to him. Without a family, life was meaningless. Therefore he would do anything to get his brother back. He would obviously have acted conscientiously and evaluated multiple scenarios thanks to his brilliant mind, trying to get out of that situation with the best benefit, but if that weren't possible he wouldn't have hesitated to sell his allies or even kill them himself.

Marcus let out a long sigh. "You know, you and your brother really are two strange dragons. Even if you try to hide it, it's clear that you have a deep bond. You are anomalies in your species. If more dragons were like you, maybe you wouldn't be so feared… "

"Or perhaps since we are feared and continually hunted and killed, there aren't many dragons like us anymore" Haku said acidly. "It's hard to maintain a brotherly bond when the whole world wants to kill you"

Marcus seemed to weigh his words. "Mh. Interesting objection. So, we hunt you all the time, and you being hunted all the time you learn to be dangerous to everyone, and then we convince ourselves that you are dangerous and we hunt you even more... it's a very complicated cycle. I wonder who should we really blame..."

"Cut the crap. I asked you what you want in exchange for my brother" Haku grumbled impatiently. "I'm not interested in your philosophical arguments. Tell me your price"

"What a hurry. I remembered you more friendly" the king said. "But if we really want to talk about what I want... well". His gaze became hard and cold as a piece of ice. "What I want is to regain control of my kingdom. I don't care what you or your allies do outside my lands, in fact I personally wish you a safe journey and a happy future, because you deserve it. But I will never sleep peacefully as long as certain… disparities exist between the two of us. By my people, and by my children, I must oblige you to give me back the control you have stolen from me"

Haku grit his teeth. It was just as he had imagined: Marcus wanted to use Rhaegal to break Haku's control over him. He wanted them to be equal players in their long game, not a master and a subordinate. At present, Haku had so much control over the kingdom that if any dispute arose between him and the king in the future, he could easily destroy half of the nation and cause a civil war, and then wipe out the rest with the large army he would soon have. created now that he had so many beastmen as allies. But if Marcus was able to force him to give up all his advantages, then the scales of balance would be back in perfect alignment.

"Here are my conditions. They are few, but I think they are more than fair" Marcus said crossing his arms. "The first is for you to give up the criminal organization 'The Spider'. I don't want them to dismantle it, of course: it would take too much time. And if you just give it up, I'll end up with an army of unsupervised criminals who will only cause me new problems. No, I want you to tell me the names of those who run the organization for you so I can replace you in leadership. Once I do that, I can dismantle the organization and eliminate these criminals piece by piece"

The king's request was logical. 'The spider' was the main weapon Haku had against him; once she deprived him of it, the relationship between them would become equal again. However, asking Haku to just give it up would have been silly. It was much more convenient for Marcus to know the names of the main leaders of the organization, so that he could force them to continue to keep their subordinates quiet and to provide them with the information necessary to completely defeat these criminals.

Normally Haku wouldn't mind losing 'The spider', as they were just a group of villains that he used for his own purposes. But unfortunately, giving up 'The spider' would also have meant putting the entire colonization of the Thul Oasis at risk. As he had instructed Zamor some time before, Haku had made sure that 'The spider' continued to accumulate food which they would then deliver, so as not to risk a famine in case the first cultivation attempts were not successful. But if Haku had now delivered 'The spider' to the king, this could never have happened again. Their allies' future would hang in the balance, and Haku would have to look for other ways to get more food. While obviously his allies didn't matter as much as Rhaegal, Haku also couldn't accept such a request out of hand.

"My second condition..." Marcus continued. "... is for you to teach me everything you know about runes. Not to actually me, of course, as I would understand basically nothing, but to Hara. I want you to explain to her the formation and functioning of every single rune that you know, without leaving out a single one. And of course, I also want you to explain to her how you reanimate corpses and create illusions. I don't want you to leave out anything. You told me so: knowledge is power, and you don't give it away for free... so this time I'll pay you with your brother"

Haku frowning. That was an even heavier request than the previous one. Haku hadn't given his knowledge of the runes even to his allies, except for small pieces of information. This was because such knowledge was a kind of insurance for the future: if the enemy didn't know how a certain magic worked, then he had no way to effectively block it. But had the king and consequently all his soldiers gained such knowledge, Haku would have lost his greatest advantage in hand-to-hand combat. Until he and his siblings unlocked their domain, which they didn't do for nearly eight years, the runes remained their best weapon against enemies, better even than their own beastly bodies. The way they created avatars, then… while it wasn't as pressing a problem as the previous one, revealing how the hydra's venom worked could have been dangerous. Humans, like all newcomers, did not possess the sufficient concentration to keep an avatar running and at the same time activate the rune of invisibility, and even if they did Haku and his siblings, being dragons, would have noticed immediately thanks to various factors invisible to the eyes of the newcomers, so in fact there was no risk that they would use that knowledge to send spies against them... but they could use it to find ways to recognize those using avatars and cancel the connection with the false bodies, making it very difficult to find information or to infiltrate enemy ranks. In the long run, this could be a huge drawback.

"Finally, I have a third and final condition," Marcus concluded. "I want you to tell me exactly how you defeated Carrion. I want every detail of the battle, none excluded"

Haku raised an eyebrow. "Why don't you just let him tell you about it?"

"Currently, my high royal general is still missing. He hasn't returned and we haven't found him yet. And considering your…warning, it wouldn't surprise me if you kill him one day… or if you have already killed him" the king answered. "But in any case, even if Carrion returns, I'm sure he won't be able to reveal everything to me. I doubt you let him figure out all your moves, right?"

Marcus wasn't wrong. In fact, even though Carrion had seen some of the battle, he was ignorant of many details. For example, how did Haku cause the underground river to explode. Or how he had created the false dragon in the sky. Or how they had defeated a spirit, since at the moment Carrion was fighting with her sisters and couldn't look. Or even just how she had prepared so well. There were a lot of things Carrion didn't know and shouldn't know. Revealing how he won the battle, Haku was also supposed to reveal many techniques and plans that could have been useful in another possible future battle. In essence, Marcus was demanding that he hand over not only his magical knowledge, but also his strategic and military knowledge.

Haku fully realized that if he accepted those three requests, then he and his family and their allies would be in a tremendously precarious position vis-à-vis the Jurao Kingdom. Marcus didn't know exactly where they were headed, but he could tell since there weren't many habitable places in the desert. If he decided he wanted to have a conflict with them, he would know where to look for them and with his small number of troops Haku could not oppose the entire army of the Jurao Kingdom. By complying with those conditions, Haku would have lost the power to unleash a civil war, his superiority or at least unpredictability in the magical field and also a good part of his strategic superiority, forcing him to research new spells and to reorganize from scratch all the military structure he had used until then, which would have been difficult if not impossible. In practice, Haku would have lost all advantage and in case of conflict the only hope, barring unexpected circumstances, would have been to escape.

Haku felt tremendously conflicted. For him, saving Rhaegal was more important, and if he hadn't had any alternatives, he would certainly have agreed to fulfill those three conditions… but he also had to keep in mind the consequences that doing so would have. If he had accepted, it would not have been safer to remain in the Thul Oasis: with the king in possession of so many advantages, and with the possibility of him deciding to eliminate them (well, what fool would have let young dragons live near his kingdom? Young dragons that would sooner or later become adult and deadly dragons?), he and his siblings would have had to give up the intention of building a new community with Zamor and the others and leave the oasis in search of a new destination, thus also giving up the plan they had followed for two full years. It was too risky a situation, and Haku absolutely couldn't take such a decision lightly.

Although the dragon's expression remained indecipherable, Marcus could imagine the conflict that was going on in his mind. So he said: "Obviously you don't have to decide right away. Since you have many allies, I assume you want to confront them before giving an answer. Go ahead, and come back here in another three days. I hope to hear an affirmative answer"

Those words worried Haku. He didn't understand why the king, who had such a big advantage, was allowing him to buy time. Or maybe it was he who wanted to buy time? He had a bad feeling and he didn't like it. "Okay" he said. "I'll be back in three days with my answer. But just as a reminder..."

Haku reached out and grabbed Marcus by the neck, dragging him towards him; Hara and Thornag moved into attack positions, but he completely ignored them and looked the king straight in the eyes. "I expect to find my brother in one piece when you deliver him to me. If I see him with even just a single wound on him, or an ounce lost, or a broken bone, or a scale less, or even if he just tells me that someone of you slapped him… so run, and run as far as you can, until your feet bleed, and keep running for all your life… because I will hunt you to the other side of the world if necessary, and when I have found you I will teach you personally why your kind fear my kind so much!"

And having said this, he let the king go; Marcus sat down and rubbed his neck, which was now clearly red. Haku gave him one last scornful look, then he turned and walked out of the tower without looking back.

Thornag and Hara ran to the king and helped him up. "That dragon..." Thornag grumbled. "Are you well, Your Majesty?"

"Yeah, don't worry" Marcus answered breathing slightly harder than before. He didn't want to admit it, but when he looked into the dragon's frozen eyes, his skin crawled very much.