Serena flew high in the air on her way back towards home and found herself in an incredibly dark mood as she thought about the last few days of exploration through the graves of those long dead. Even the joy of flight during such a wonderfully clear daytime sky did little to ease the feelings tumbling around in her gut. Now that Rosalyn was able to feed herself with little difficulty and she had learned the basics of flight and mana manipulation Serena had decided it was time to look around for other dragonkin while her new daughter practiced her skills in the relative safety of their home.

Serena was of two minds about the possibility of finding other dragons. Her heart told her that none of her subjects survived, as she had possessed a connection of fealty to them she would be able to feel and that she was alone. Her brain told her that not every dragon had pledged themselves to her throne and that surely some had survived as no matter how efficient an army was at killing them some should have slipped through the cracks. Either way she needed to scour all of the places she knew dragons had congregated. Either she would find clues to possible survivors or she would confirm that her species was all but extinct. Also, she could snap up the hoards of the dead dragons and add them to her own, which was a nice bonus. She was a dragon after all and she did love shiny things.

Her initial forays into the area now dubbed the dragon wastes before her egg had hatched were a portent of the feelings of sadness and disappointment that she had felt this trip as well. She had visited several smaller settlements and a few locations she knew had held the hoards of many of the larger dragons looking for any sign that some had survived. Unfortunately all she had come across were the long sacked village ruins belonging to those she had let down, although she did find a few interesting things. First she had uncovered two mostly intact hoards which she promptly stored and that one of the old hoard sites, the basement of a tower that formerly belonged to a draconic sorcerer who’s name escaped Serena at this time, was what the human adventurer association called a monster hole.

Serena had not been expecting the phenomena to happen in any of the places she was going to visit, but it did make sense in way. The hole she had been trapped in was also classified as such due to the large amount of mana in the air and as a result she had spent almost a full two days investigating the basement of the collapsed tower looking for some clues to what caused such a reaction.

The part of Serena that loved to learn new things about mana and its practical applications was giddy at this new toy to play with. After all, the monster hole phenomenon only started occurring a decade or so after her imprisonment so it was something new to look into. It had been a deciding factor on why she had settled in the woods of Wizard’s Folly, the world’s largest example of the very thing she wanted to look into. It was just a glorious bonus that it also provided ample mana for her and any children she brought into the world to subside on without resorting to hurting the environment or hunting livestock. Also, the total lack of nearby villagers was great as well.

Sadly, she was not able to pinpoint origination point in the tower basement, but she did have to fight several groups of incredibly large rats with glowing mushrooms growing out of their backs as she went further in as well as a monstrously large cave lion with two barbed tentacles growing out of either side of its face. Serena had taken samples of the rats and the mushrooms as well as from the big cat to discuss with her alchemist friend and her husband during her trip home. Afterwards, feeling a bit peckish from her exertions she made a light snack of the feline and found it had surprisingly spicy mana flowing through its body that was similar to certain types of squid she had eaten during her adolescence. All in all she really enjoyed the meal and decided that she would have to come back and get some for Rosalyn. As she munched on a the remains of the back haunch she remembered why she what she was doing and instead resolved to come back instead because it might have some clues relating to the cause of the weird mana fluctuations of that seemed to happen in all monster holes, not because there was a monster here with tasty mana.

Deciding that she had did not want to disrupt the ecosystem too much, she packed up her samples and decided to head home. Despite her somewhat foul mood it was a beautiful day as Serena came back into view of Folly’s Spite, and she was glad to be so close to her home. Angling down to land in her usual spot, she almost decided to skip her planned trip into town to get home that much sooner, but decided to go and get the chores done so that it would be off of her mind. Besides, she really was craving one of the local baker’s cinnamon buns. “That icing is really too delicious…” she muttered to herself as she opened her own personal pocket dimension and retrieved one of the simple silver sun-dresses that she had come to favor. Rosalyn chastised her for not wearing underwear, something the elder dragoness didn’t really see the point of as the dress shielded her modesty well enough. Taking the large purse she used to disguise her opening her storage dimension and slinging it over her shoulder she started to jog to the city gates.

“Cinnamon buns, here I come! Yum!”

It was an hour or so later and Serena had a candied fruit muffin in one hand and a large sticky cinnamon roll in the other as she walked toward Mr. and Mrs. Cradok’s shop over by the bazaar, idly munching on both items with alternating bites as she minced down the cobblestone streets. “Ahh! Ms. Silver! Wait!” Stopping and looking over her shoulder Serena saw a man that she recognized as an out of uniform local guard that she had spoken with a few times over the last month or so on her way in the gate. “Gerald, right? How is your daughter?”

Coming to a halt in front of her he gave a lopsided smile and offered a crisp salute as he replied, “She is doing wonderful ma’am. I was told that if you hadn’t shown up when you did with that potion she would have lost her leg. Thank you again!” Waving away the thanks as if they were a minor thing she said, “It was the neighborly thing to do. Now, did you need something? I am afraid I need to get home to my own daughter and I still have business to attend to today.”

Gerald smirked knowingly as he looked down at the pastries in both of Serena’s hands and she reflexively hid them behind her back. Bursting out in laughter Gerald shook his head, “No, well I wanted to say thanks again, but I also just wanted to make sure you found the tailor you were looking for. Some of the boys mentioned a silver haired woman coming through the east gate and I could only think of one person it could be. I was gonna offer to escort you over there, while Seamus is the best tailor in town he is on the edge of what would be considered the shady part of town and people have been mugged over there before. I figured having a known guard in your company would deter that.”

Freezing as she realized what he was saying, Serena closed her eyes and felt the air. It was subtle, as all the humans really muddled the flow of mana, but it was there. Rosalyn was in town. A thousand thoughts raced through her head as she processed this, but Serena decided to squash them as she took a deep breath. Rosalyn was technically a grown woman, even if she was still a toddler dragon at best. She would be fine. Still, she had better check on her lest something terrible happen. “Can you confirm the directions from here? I did get a little lost, although I must decline your offer of an escort.”

A few minutes later and Serena found herself a street over from the tailor and she could clearly feel the familiarity of her own mana tinged with Rosalyn’s in the air. Heading that way at a much slower walk, she took one last bite of her cinnamon bun before licking her fingers clean. “Can’t look authoritative with pastries in your hand…” Serena wasn’t really mad, after all Rosalyn was technically almost seventeen years old mentally and she had expected her to want to come to the city at some point. She was a little surprised that she managed to convince the kobolds to let her go while her both Cham and herself were away though. “I definitely am going to have a talk with the Matriarch when I get back.”

That was when she felt the shift in Rosalyn’s mana, and it wasn’t a subtle one. Serena felt rage permeate the air in a way that she hadn’t for a hundred years and she dropped her remaining muffin and bolted towards a nearby alley. In the middle of several down, and in some cases, bleeding thugs stood Rosalyn, imperiously holding one of the unlucky men aloft by his neck. Serena idly noted that the man was a very unhealthy shade of purple, but quickly turned her attention back to her daughter.

Her dress, one of the ones that she received from Serena and hemmed, was covered in mud and torn in a few places but it wasn’t the state of her clothes that worried her. Sticking out of her head was the azure form of her horn and her hands were very quickly turning from fingers into claws. Her eyes as well had taken on the slit pupils of her dragon-self, eyes that held murder in their depths. Wondering why she was angry, Serena quickly scanned the scene and instantly knew.

"MINE." Rosalyn hissed into the face of the man she held aloft.

Dragons had many instincts, but the two these men had triggered were up there on the violent reprisal scale: Protect the family and protect the hoard. These idiots had hurt Poh, who was lying unmoving with a dazed look to the side and one of them had ripped Rosalyn’s locket from her neck. Letting out a sigh of exasperation, she knew that if she did not stop this right now it would escalate into something Rosalyn would regret. Not wanting to manipulate her daughter like this, but seeing no other option, she tapped into another draconic instinct. The Mother-daughter imprinting.

“Stop this right now.”