The Crow Goddess's Heir

As Haalfrin and Dakka continue to silently chat away in their heads to each other, they let the meeting pass by without concern.

About an hour into the meeting (which Haalfrin has no idea if it's going well or not), Myra nudges Haalfrin and growls, "They're talking to you!" She motions with her head to the Clan elders at the table.

Haalfrin looks down the table and sees Dakka's grandparents looking straight at him.

"!!!" ~ Haalfrin

Haalfrin nudges Myra and hisses, "What do they want!?"

"Just go stand behind Jay at the table, and I'll translate for you." Haalfrin knows Draconic, but he just realizes that he's never told anyone that. Not wanting to waste time arguing, he complies.

Once he gets in position behind Jay, Myra says to him, "First, they want you to show them Dakka."

"!!!" ~ Dakka

Haalfrin steps forward and holds out the dragonbone ax at his waist while Dakka screams out, 'No NOOO! Put me a way! Haalfrin, you TRAITOR!'

The man only ignores him.

One of the 4 horned dragons in the background steps forward and says, "It's time for the human to give our nephew back!"

Myra repeats this again – this time in Brancotte's tongue.

Haalfrin considers his options for a moment…

Indeed, just giving up his best weapon without a fight would make his goal of dying in battle easier, so you'd think he has nothing to consider here.

However, he does like Dakka quite a bit now, so parting ways with him would be pretty sad.

Hmm… no… it would also be mean to Dakka to deprive him of the chance to get his physical body back, via resurrection by Fheldin.

Dakka feels Haalfrin's conflicting emotions, so he squeals out in a fit of panic, 'No, NO! Haalfrin DON'T HAND ME OVER!!'

'Again, why?'

'That old man's crazy! He'll lock me up and get mad at me for running away from home!'

Haalfrin then looks at Dakka's father says confidently in the Brancotte tongue, "Dakka says he doesn't want to go back. He says you're crazy and that you'll lock him up."

Myra looks shocked and growls, "I can't translate THAT! You'll make Lord Fheldin angry!"

Haalfrin just gives her a stern look and says, "Do it!"

Dakka shouts, 'No! Don't do it! You'll make the old man crazy mad!'

After Myra hesitantly repeats Haalfrin's words, Lord Fheldin – instead of getting mad, only smiles and says, "So you don't want to come back home, huh? You think I'm going to lock you up for running away from home?"

"Hmm…," Fheldin puts his hand on his chin. "I did consider taking you back since you might have been a pansy for losing to a human."

He looks at the host of dragons standing behind him in their humanoid forms. "They all seem to think that Dakka is still a child that was killed in his sleep or something, despite Hraldin witnessing your feats of strength a few years back."

"!!! ???" ~ Haalfrin's 4 companions.

Clearly, they haven't heard of Haalfrin's previous visit to Lord Fheldin's palace before now.

Fheldin smiles. "How about this? In order to make my sons happy, I'll have you duel Dakka's father – this time in front of my entire lineage. Nobody will be able to complain after that or keep quiet out of embarrassment."

Haalfrin smiles and speaks up – this time in Draconic, "How about our duel? Can't we just do that instead? You DID promise me earlier."

Fheldin waves him off, "Don't be so impatient! We can talk about that later!"

"Eh," Haalfrin shrugs, "Let's just do as you say then. I'll fight Dakka's dad."

Myra has a horrified look as she hears this exchange. "No! Let's not do this?! Just hand over the ax and escape with your life!" she protests in Brancotte's tongue.

Fheldin and Haalfrin both ignore her. The dragon lord points to the door behind his sons. "Follow them out back and get this over with. I trust you won't lose against that slug."

---------------------

As soon as Haalfrin leaves, Fheldin twists and turns on his chair uncomfortably.

... Truth be told, he doesn't actually want to fight Haalfrin, despite the promise he made to him earlier…

Fheldin taps his claws on the table pensively as he thinks, 'After witnessing a human thrash some of my sons around, and after seeing the man's unflinching attitude even when faced with my Pressure, he didn't move. Plus, he's a god-candidate, so that counts for something.'

The dragon lord smiles out of nowhere, and everyone else in the room gets chills. What is Lord Fheldin thinking about?

Ignoring the emissaries' nervous reactions to his body language, Fheldin can't help but smile as he fantasizes about a god-candidate becoming his son-in-law.

'No, no,' Fheldin shakes his head, 'I can't force my daughters to marry anyone. I promised Arla I wouldn't do that.' He smiles again. '…But the Felkin are the most beautiful of all races. Upon meeting them, Haalfrin would probably be interested in marrying one. Plus, with so many daughters, the laws of probability say that at least one of them will like him back.'

Every time Fheldin thinks about how to snag Haalfrin, he can't help but be restless, thinking of the promise he made out of impulse to the human. The human wanted a duel to the death…

'Arg,' Fheldin can't help but curse thinking about it. 'I want Haalfrin to be part of my household… and he can't do that if he's dead! At the same time, I can't NOT have a duel with him, since the man has healed his leg and arrived, as promised. I can't break a promise! Plus, it wouldn't make sense for me to lose on purpose.'

Indeed, Fheldin is far too prideful to actually lose a challenge. Plus, if he DID lose on purpose, he'd just make the human hate him.

With all these complicated thoughts swirling inside Lord Fheldin's head, he naturally snaps at the human when he reminds the wyrm about their duel. "Don't be so impatient! We can talk about our duel later!" he had said.

---------------------

While the clan meeting is going on, one of Dakka's uncles - a blue dragon with green stripes - gestures with his head for Haalfrin to follow him. Without a word, the two of them head off down the hall.

They don't make it far down the hallway when a man and woman pair of Rehkin immediately break away from the meeting and awkwardly make their way after Haalfrin and the dragons.

"Excuse me!" one of the little Crows calls out, "Haalfrin, is it?! Yes, may we have a word with you before you leave?"

Seeing this, one of Dakka's uncles growls at the 2 Crows, "Insolent, little birdie! You're interrupting our business!"

"Yeah!" one of the other uncles grimaces, "what gave you the audacity to abandon the meeting our father was so kind to give you all?"

The female Crow immediately bends at the waist in a deep bow and says, "I apologize for our rudeness. There was something we had to ask this human, as it's a matter of utmost importance."

The other Crow bows as well while saying in Draconic, "Yes, we're afraid we won't have another chance to bring this up to the human, since he'll probably be dead within the hour."

Hearing that the 2 Crows have so much confidence in their victory, the dragons' expressions soften again, and one of them says (this time more politely), "Fine. Just make it quick."

The female Crow turns to Haalfrin and smiles apologetically, "I'm sorry sir, but you ARE the one our goddess told us about? The one soul she's trying to claim?"

"Yes, that's me?"

The girl nods anxiously before finally explaining herself, "Our goddess is well aware that you have her young heir with you."

Frey?

Regardless of Haalfrin's questions, he doesn't say anything, and he just lets her keep talking.

"Our Crow goddess said that her young heir has her 6th Gate open now, and that she's ready to receive help getting the 7th Gate open."

"…What kind of help?" Haalfrin asks. "What could you possibly do for her?"

The male Crow steps in, "You need a substantial amount of Significance to cross the threshold into the Divine Realm. The Crow goddess, as a black soul, only needs resources to open her Gates. For her first 6 Names, getting enough Death Aura was enough, but she needs Significance now."

Haalfrin looks down at the Spirit stone bottle with a complicated gaze before asking, "How do you plan on giving her this Significance?"

"Just as the Crow goddess before her, and the one before that, she'll need to be propped up as our Queen and be worshipped by all our people," the Crow answers.

Indeed, the Crow race is fractured and scattered, but with the appearance of the Crow goddess's heir as their queen, the factions may finally be reunited; this is certainly significant enough to help propel Frey on to godhood.

And if that isn't enough, the ancient Crow clan has ways of traversing the Untamed world gates; they can travel across worlds and unite all the other Crow clans on the other worlds too. Once she becomes the uncontested Queen of ALL Crows, there's no way she won't have enough Significance to help the young girl climb into godhood.

The human takes a moment to breathe deeply as he considers his options.

He COULD just hand over the Spirit Stone bottle that Frey is in, but judging by the way her bottle is shaking frantically, he suspects she has something to say about that.

He COULD also let them know that Frey is "nearby" and that he'll be sure to ask her about it before he officially duels the dragons…

… Yeah, that actually sounds like a good idea.

So, once Haalfrin lets them know that he'll seek young Frey's opinion on this, the 2 Crows look like they want to protest.

However, one look from the dragons immediately bleeds the courage out of them. They then slink back off to the clan meeting and endure awkward stares from all the other guests here.

"Now that the birdies are out of the way," one of the dragons says, "let's get moving."