Green dragons are generally found in forested areas, trending towards temperate as it has the least amount of competition from their larger kin. Their affinities are nature based plant life being the highest followed by a mix of earth and water. They often can command the semi sentient life of their territory through instinct.

Geldath

I frown at the small number of other Magi who gathered at my call. Only a few handfuls of us have lasted through the dozens of void erosions we have gone through to survive as long as we have.

A glance around as I subtly push as their essence tells me what I wanted to know and I do not like the answer. None of them retain the power of being an archmage. I am the last and we will fade from existence, unless the experiment pans out.

My mood takes a further plummet, that experiment has been getting harder and harder to track. All I can tell now is that he is in northern Missouri now instead of southern. No longer can I read his emotions, thoughts or even health. I don’t like the alarming rate at which he had been gaining power since the banished returned.

“Why did you call us all here Geldath?” asks Ramauth, the body he now inhabits an elderly man from Spain.

“Two things, first to discuss the return of the banished and second the curse that binds all of us.” I respond.

Several of the others frown slightly, none of us like the banished. We never would have thrown them out of this world if it wasn’t so, even if the banishment itself was a mistake.

“Their return has ruined most of the world, just as they were doing centuries ago. The world is better without them and should have stayed that way” Aventus says and most of the room nod. As he is in the body of a child he must have died in the last decade.

“The era of high magic was better, we were god kings. Now we can be so again” states Dace, I always hated his obsession with ruling a city as a god. Always turning the ancient pagan gods against us.

My dislike is shared as no one else in the room says anything to support him.

“There are only three possible solutions to the return of the banished. First kill them, second reperform the banishment or third undo their return.”

I pause here for nigh a minute, letting everyone go over the effects each of these solutions would have in their own mind. Dace will reject them for the idea of recreating his god king thing but he will cede to the group vote's outcome.

Killing the banished nor rebanishing them will return the world to how we want it. Removing the cause of the damage does not undo the damage already done. This will lead to the more difficult solution of undoing their return or Dace’s be god kings idea.

“Does anyone disagree with solutions one and two are inviable?”

No one replies and I smile, “then how shall we undo the return of the banished?”

“Becoming god kings again” answers Dace and we all ignore him.

“If you are talking about temporal reversal, what would keep events from repeating?” asks Ramauth.

“We would have to separate someone so they retain their memories and push the individual into the world of the banished” I respond.

“Are you volunteering Geldath?” Avernus asks.

I smile, “no. We can decide who will do that later, after the needed rite is prepared.”

“Fine. Your experiment and biological grandson, have you determined if he is a valid solution to our curse?” Tharen says.

“I know that he is not afflicted as we are, testing if his children will bear the soul mutation to manipulate reality were to be tested over the next half decade.”

“It has been going well then.”

“No, he has been growing in power at an exponential rate since the banished returned and he has escaped my ability to observe directly. The thunder twins are still acting as guards but their last report stated that he had grown nearly to what they were as archmages, at least as far as raw power goes.”

“How is that possible? Was he not being taught everything as disjoined as possible to prevent him from becoming powerful?”

“He was, I think it may be the banished he is traveling with. He was always obsessed with high fantasy and now that is his reality.”

“So now you have a rouge Ravnos possibly stronger than you running amuck, sounds like you found your shield for your next void erosion.”

Randy Ravnos

Walking down the hall towards the room where my wife will have just left I frown at what needs to be done. In 99.8% of timelines where Talmage falls for my schemes the thunder twins turn against my son at the order of Geldath. In only a single possible timeline do they kill him but I don’t want my son to go through the feelings of his own family betraying him.

For the next hour my wife will not find out their removal until after she learns of and starts hating my kin for what they do. I don’t want her to feel the pain of her children killing each other.

I open the door and see that the two of them are asleep, as the portents told. They will have a proximity alarm so I can only kill one without a fight. That is enough. A silenced pistol ends Antonio and his twin bolts up, murderous rage in his eyes as he recognizes me.

“Geldath will rend your soul for this” he spits as he throws a bolt of electricity.

The forming electrical burns along his arm tell me that he lacks the power to fully control his signature lightning anymore. The copper mesh I concealed in my jacket and running down to my boots mitigates most of the damage the lightning would have caused but the sound will draw attention. Another bullet is spent but he vanishes, a teleport. No matter a single thunder twin is nothing anymore but I should try to find him before he meets with Geldath again.

I walk to the corpse of my successful kill and whisper the words I use for to reduce flesh and bone to dust.

Soon all that remains of my cousin who stole the body of my son is some dust. I leave the room and enter into the one my son slept in yesterday and will enter again around dusk. I pull a book from the army bag I stole earlier today, a book containing the real history of my family and our sins, and a letter and place them on the bed. I know one of his girlfriends might find it first but it will get to him.

I frown at the thought of what Kathrine must think of them. She'll get over it if my plans work and we live long enough to see the grandchildren. Virtually impossible but I will still work towards that.

I can’t see what results from that, too hazy like looking into possible past and then going to the no longer possible futures. All I know is that Adrian does not like it when Galdath does whatever that rite is.

I close the door behind me and whisper “good luck son”, even though he can’t hear it. My goodbye is in the note and I will be getting Kathrine out of the battlefield that will soon form between so many factions. I want to do more but my combat power is less than his. I will only be a burden, visits I will definitely stop by with Kathrine sometimes.

Next I need to find out how Adrian woke up the Dragon Knight bloodline from his mother. If she is going to survive this new world she will need that power. . .

Adrian

My dragon body healed, at least as much as rapid natural healing allows.

“Lets get out of here, you can fix the rest of you later” K says.

I nod before turning invisible as I say, “I’ll follow like this. Dragons are not exactly subtle.”

They all nod before heading back towards the hotel, not the best place to go but we don’t have anywhere else to go either.

No one stops us or rather the trio when they walk into the hotel. There are however a lot of people who are whispering about them and me. More specifically the fight between us and the Althaen. I don’t like the light that the Althaen are being displayed in but I can ignore them and their ignorance over just what the Althaen are. All the while I am gorging on the flesh of the red dragon, I will need it for healing.

Once we get to our room I notice that the smell of the hall is off, a tingle of ozone dissipating but I end up ignoring it. Maybe my brothers were practicing. A glance around the room reveals no hidden figures in normal or infravision and I stop bending the light around me.

There is a look of relief on the twins while K just smiles before she asks a question I don’t want to answer.

“Are you going to be able to heal yourself?”

I nod, a lie as I am actually not sure. It will be harder than regrowing my wing as there are a lot of vital organs in my torso. I also don’t know how long I have to stabilize myself before I would die.

“I’ll start after you are all ready to sleep, it'll be messy and I don’t want to worry you” I reply to her look of 'don't lie to me'.

That is apparently accepted and the three of them all quickly get ready for bed. Each giving me a hug and kiss though I certainly enjoyed it less than normal. My scales dampen most of the feeling from such light sensations.

I walk over to the bathroom thinking of how to manage to not die once I swap back to being human. I can hear the breathing of the trio get lighter but not slower. They are faking to be asleep, no doubt worried about me.

I take a deep breath and brace my mind for the resuming of the pain that body no doubt is in. I cut the sense of pain as soon as I begin to shift. I can feel my blood flowing out of the hole that stretches from my right shoulder to just before my heart.

I hold my breath as my lungs are exposed to the open air with holes in them. The circulatory system has to be fixed first and I stop my heart to preserve what blood I still have in my veins. I force my blood vessels to regrow by drawing on the dragon flesh in my gut to fuel the process. My mind slowly growing dimmer as oxygen depravation begins in my brain. Three minutes pass before I begin to panic, they are not regrowing fast enough.

I can’t heal this body fast enough, it will die before I can stabilize it. Six minutes in the blood vessels finally connect and my heart starts up. This buys me a bit more time but there is no way I can fix my lungs and ribcage before my blood runs out of oxygen. The only solution I can think of is to steal the flesh of someone else as a patch but that would kill them and the only people close enough would be the trio.

Just before I change back to my dragon form to preserve my life I hear me-but-not-me whisper, “fuse your bodies.”

Without even thinking over what that would entail or how that would affect me I will for that to happen. I don’t care if I end up a hybrid monster, both death or never being able to properly feel the touch of those precious to me are worse.

The last thing I feel before passing out is taking a breath for the first time in several minutes.