"According to his own statement that Keiy just sent me, this human showed great interest in working for you,. Eighty two percent desire to be a subordinate? You are lucky to have found such an early devotee,” the Wendigo hologram smiled. “Plus the Marshal's personal evaluation seems very positive. Rejoice!”

  Galateya didn't rejoice, she looked quite sour at the ‘unexpected consort’ development.

  “Ashcroft clearly proved himself useful, like that… other human working with Division 881’s Datamancer and Alpha-Scrut. Most importantly," Ixthia's smile widened, "he'll serve as an example of obedience to the Frontenachii Dominion Aegis for future generations. A human hero, uplifted through service to the Frontenachii! Eventually, he could even serve as your Colonial Secretary when you become the Baroness of Earth."

  "But—but I don't even know him!" Galateya sputtered. “We’ve just met!”

  "Then get to know him. Consider it part of your education in local relations." Ixthia waved dismissively. "I’ll have a diamond medal award ceremony made up later for the three of you that we’ll cast worldwide.”

  Galateya made bubbling dragon noises.

  “Come now. You need to start somewhere, my darling. One local consort is hardly scandalous." Her great-grandmother intoned. “This is your moment to shine, the day you’ve been trained for your entire life!”

  Nexxali made a barely concealed strangled sound of a dying cat whose catnip was just taken away.

  Galateya tried to formulate words but they didn’t come to her.

  "This is an opportunity," Ixthia intoned. "Seize it by the reins! Here's your chance. Civilize this human. Train him. Show the fleet that with proper guidance, humans can be more than ‘pain and fear’ emanation resources."

  "I'm right here," I pointed out.

  "Yes, yes, and you're about to become very privileged," Ixthia said. "Accept the job of being her devoted consort. Galateya needs to start building her power base, and you're going to help her do it. Disappoint me and you will join the other humans on my wall.”

  "Elder," Galateya pleaded, "surely there must be—"

  "No. My decision is final... Unless you'd prefer Nexxali to execute this human now for knowing too much. Perhaps you need a few more days of bone-breaking training with your sisters at the capital ship’s colosseum? I'm sure the Celesteel walls would love to welcome you back."

  Galateya shuddered visibly.

  "I thought not. Marshal Commandant Nexxali, you'll assist my granddaughter in establishing herself. Ensure she has everything she needs to succeed. Help her rise to the top! I want regular reports on her progress. From here on, you answer directly to me, obey me alone!”

  "Of course, Legate," Nexxali ground out, tail swishing angrily behind her.

  "Oh, and Galateya?" Ixthia added as her projection began to fade. "A Baroness without kobolds is just embarrassing. Do start by blood-binding that human. If he's as useful as the Marshal claims, he should make an adequate first kobold. Don't slack off and don’t betray my expectations. If Ashcroft is not bound as your consort within… say, ten hours, ALL of you will face my utmost displeasure."

  The projection vanished, leaving us in stunned silence.

  [9:59:59] Red numbers flashed on the side of Keiy’s hexagonal head.

  Galateya stared at the numbers counting down for a few seconds. Then, she exploded, scales shifting into steaming volcanic rocks, the pink flowers dying and turned to ashes. She grabbed Nexxali, shaking her. “What the fuck did you do?! Why did you tell her all that shit?!”

  "What?! I helped…" Nexxali hissed, trying to pry Galateya's black claws off her dead suit. "I made everyone look good. Maybe a little… too good.”

  “You…!” Galateya growled.

  “Yes. Me and my extra-yappy mouth. Blame the human!" The Serval smacked me with her tail. “He stuffed me full of catnip, it makes me ranty!”

  Violet dragon eyes glared at me, her claws releasing the cat girl. I shrugged.

  “Welp, guess I'm promoted to babysitter for Miss Can't-Make-Friends!" Nexxali dramatically flopped across my lap. "Lost me a perfectly good human pet though! Wah."

  "I'm nobody's pet," I said.

  "You're about to be her kobold," Nexxali pointed out. "Which is worse. It's permanent. Forever. Until you die. Which you won’t. Cus’ they won’t let you."

  “Mmmm… immortality job benefits. Do I get a gun-proof magic suit too?” I joked. “And my own gun spider bae? Or do we get to share Keiy? I really like Keiy.”

  The gun blushed again.

  “I don’t think they’d give hexasuits to the low tier life. You won’t be able to interact with such properly due to lack of a heart core. Also, you’re far too cheerful for someone who has less than ten hours of freedom,” Nexxali commented, stretching diagonally.

  I turned to Galateya who had fallen suspiciously silent. The dragon covered her face with her hexasuit gloves, sniffling. Her scales shifted from jagged rocks to dead bark, blue and green moss gracing her mane.

  It took me another moment to notice that she was crying.

  “Really?” Nexxali rolled her eyes. “You’re that much against kobolds and me being your personal instructor?”

  “Sup, future consort?” I offered lightly. “Why so glum? Does the concept of a shotgun wedding bother you?”

  Wet, violet eyes stared at me between black-gloved fingers, my words derailing the dragon girl from her depression spiral. “Huh? You’re the consort… not me!”

  “Nexy, go with Keiy and fetch your gun out of the well,” I ordered, pushing the Serval off my lap.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Ugh. Why is everyone bossing me around today?” she complained. “It’s like nobody respects my Marshal authority on this damn planet!”

  "Someone needs to supervise Keiy, Marshal," I gave her a meaningful look.

  The Serval's golden eyes widened slightly as she caught my focused intent. "Right. Yes. The well searchery needs... supervision. Come on, Keiy. Let's go fish out my gun."

  "I can retrieve it alone," Keiy said.

  "Nope! You need my expert guidance on well-based gun retrieval!" Nexxali chattered. "Very technical process. Requires a Marshal's oversight. Be back in ten minutes!"

  She winked at me.

  The back door slammed behind them, leaving me alone with a distraught dragon girl.

  Front mind: Poor dragon is having a rough day.

  Back mind: The complications increase. If she blood-binds me, how does that affect my deal with Shady? Wait, do I even have a deal with Shady? Can someone have multiple blood pacts? And what happens when Shady sees me? What if she smells the pact on me? A problem for the future me to deal with, no doubt.

  "Want to talk about what’s bothering you?" I asked the sad-looking dragon.

  Her tears trailed down her face. Small, blue flowers bloomed across her scales and on the fabric of the seat wherever the tears fell.

  "It's not… just," she said quietly.

  "What isn't just?"

  "Any of this. All of it." Her scales gradually shifted to weathered, white driftwood. "The insane lies Nexxali piled up around us. The blood contracts. The conquest. The way my great-grandmother manipulates everyone like pieces on a game board. The way I was raised to… like humans just in case we were to run into a human-populated world! None of it is just!"

  "Why do you care about justice so much?" I asked. "Surely such isn't high on the conquistador priority list of planetary invaders. Are you that different from your sisters?"

  Galateya looked at me with deep violet eyes shifting to green from below. "Doctor Iowsh taught me that my Omnitype, Taniwha, is inherently aligned to justice. It's not just philosophy for me. It's... physical. Biological. When things are unjust, I literally feel it. Like nausea. Like drowning. It doesn’t match the ‘Fear’ waveforms desired by the Wendigos."

  “So, you desire Justice like Wendigos desire Fear,” I contemplated. “That does sound like an inconvenient incompatibility.”

  "Do you know what it's like being on those damned ships? Every surface is made from the suffering of enslaved species! Every decoration is someone's eternal torment! And I have to pretend it doesn't make me want to tear my own scales off!"

  “You're on Earth now so it's all good, right?”

  "ALL GOOD?!" She stood and began pacing, leaving blooming flowers on my floor in her wake between floorboards. "Don’t you get it?! That damned cat dug us all early graves with her stupid mouth! Where the fuck are we gonna find remains of forty vampire thralls?! And my great-grandmother wants me to blood-bind you into absolute obedience like a thinking piece of meat… which is the OPPOSITE of justice!"

  “Surely you can overcome your Omnitype desires, not stress over it so much?” I asked, thinking of Shady.

  The Wendigo girl did enjoy scaring me. Jumping at me from behind trees in the dark or emerging from a closet or from under my bed was her favorite type of prank to pull on my younger self.

  “Do you just not give a shit about being magically enslaved?!” the Taniwha barked, “What is wrong with you?! How can you be so calm about this?!”

  "What if it wasn't slavery?" I said.

  She stopped pacing. "What?"

  "The blood contract. What if we made one based on equal cooperation, on friendship instead of dominance?"

  Galateya stared at me like I'd grown a second head. "That's... that's not possible."

  "Why not?"

  "Because blood contracts are inherently hierarchical! The dragon dominates, the kobold serves. That's how they work!"

  "Says who?" I asked. "Has anyone actually tried making an equal one?"

  "I..." She frowned. "No, but that's because it wouldn't work. There’s a power differential. A dragon and a kobold. Master and servant."

  “Uh-huh,” I hummed. “But what if it works?”

  “It CANNOT work because that’s not how things…”

  “Consider this—You’re on MY Earth now, Galateya,” I channeled the Emperor. “Things here don’t work right. The pradavarian Scrutimancers can’t sniff out your lost Princess and her kobold Emperor no matter how hard they try. Why is that?”

  “Too much Linearity,” Galateya said. “Your world’s Aether is too damn Linear. Plus, I think that… that collective human observation creates a fluctuating causality field that actively rejects and decays magical frameworks.”

  “Exactly,” I said sagely. “So why don’t we make a blood contract where we’re equal… one that we’d both be satisfied with, one that’s one hundred percent just?”

  "That's..." Galateya sat back down with a deep sigh. "I've never heard of such a thing. The Binding contract texts are very clear—the dragon commands and kobolds obey!"

  “On other planets,” I insisted. “Not here.”

  “And what if you are bound fully, mentally broken into total obedience?” Galateya demanded. “I already hate myself, hate what I have to do! How can I live with myself…”

  “Just don’t,” I said.

  “Don’t?”

  “Don’t hate yourself,” I offered. “Move forward. Do better. Bind us as friends who can build something ‘just’ together. You seem a far better option as planetary Baroness than any of the clueless Frontenachii Commanders who can’t even tell whether Garry Cotter is real.”

  "I… I don't even know how blood pacts work exactly," she admitted. "I've never made one. I've actively avoided looking deeper into it because the whole concept disgusts me. Doctor Iowsh described the ritual for me once when I was younger. It was… awful and one sided. Keiy will probably want to supervise me and do the whole hand-cutting thing and display the words for me to say… so I don’t fuck it up. I… I don’t want to do this! I don’t want to bind anyone as a slave, it’s not right, not balanced, not just!”

  “So we don’t use the Frontenachii contract wording,” I said. “And we do it while Keiy is away. Like… right now.”

  “Now?” She blinked.

  “Yes, now,” I said. I walked into the kitchen and returned with a knife. “We might not get another chance. It’s just cutting our hands and saying the right words, yeah?”

  “Yes… but,” Galateya mewled, staring at me with wide eyes as I sliced a number eight into my hand going over the old scar made by Shady.

  “Can your great-grandmother or other Wendigos pull answers out of your head with their mental hooks?” I asked.

  “If they push very hard… yes,” Galateya replied. “I… I haven’t been trained in mental defenses, nor am I a natural at it… like the Wendigos. I can sorta push them out slightly, but I’m not the best at it. My great-grandmother can read me instantly.”

  “You will need to learn how to fully shield your innermost thoughts then,” I said, offering her the knife.

  Violet eyes searched mine for a long moment, then she sighed and accepted the knife. She whispered something and the right glove of her hexasuit crawled off her fingers down to her wrist. "This is completely insane. We're about to violate millennia of Frontenachii tradition based on your hunch that your Earth's physics will let us cheat."

  "Not cheat," I corrected, watching blood well up in my palm. "Innovate. I’m one hundred percent certain that this will work. Trust me."

  She stared at the blade, then at her own white-bark, scaled, exposed hand. "What exactly do we even say?"

  Once again, I recalled that summer day with Shady, the words we'd exchanged under the oak tree. "We each declare ourselves equals, bound by blood and soul. No hierarchy. No master and servant. Just... partners."

  "Partners." She tested the word like it might bite her. "And you're sure this will satisfy my great-grandmother's requirement?"

  "It's still a blood pact." I shrugged. “Your grandmother ain’t gonna come down from orbit to check on us, yeah? She’s probably going to rely on Keiy and Nexxali to keep us in line, right? That’s why she threatened all of us, not just you.”

  “Right.” Galateya took a deep breath. The knife trembled slightly in her grip. "Abyss, I've spent my entire life avoiding this moment. I'm… so not ready.”