"It's so big!"
Dan's voice cracked across the open sky. Far below, the city spread out like a map someone had unrolled: stone spires, thousands of terracotta roofs, streets stitched together in a crooked web. Every book he'd ever read had described this, and none of them had gotten it right.
"A real city! We're finally here, Mom!" He yanked her sleeve hard enough to spin her half a turn in the air.
"Careful, little man. You'll fall out of the sky." Lizzy mussed his black-and-red spikes.
"As if. I'm basically a master of flight." He puffed out his chest, then snapped into a perfect loop above the clouds. "And a little drop wouldn't hurt me anyway."
"Since when are you this confident?" She drifted beside him, red hair streaming behind her like a banner.
"You'd catch me." He slowed and looked up at her, eyes bright. "Right?"
Her gaze had drifted to the palace towers. It stayed there a beat too long.
"Sure, sure. You got me."
A glint flashed from the courtyard far below, a precise flicker of mana off the palace towers.
"Time to land. Your father's calling."The smirk came back. "Last one down licks a raw lime!"
She tucked her arms and dove.
"Hey! No fair!"
Dan flared his mana and shot after her.
Something blew past Lizzy in a streak, a sonic crack trailing it. Her eyes went wide. 'He's fast. Maybe I should let him win this once.' She paused. 'It's a raw lime. Hell no.'
---
In the sunlit courtyard, Arthur stood alone in a deep red robe laced with gold, the ancestral crown on his black hair. He squinted at the empty sky. He was sure he'd sent the landing signal correctly. They'd have been here an hour ago if Lizzy had let him teleport them, but she'd flatly refused and flown the whole way.
"That's cheating!" Dan yelled from above, as Lizzy's hand clamped onto his collar and killed his momentum.
"Nobody said sabotage was against the rules!"
"You're going to regret that." Dan smiled, and something sharp flashed in his eyes.
Space tore. It wasn't one jump but a chain of short teleports, one after another, down through the air. Lizzy was still holding his collar. She went with him.
Her face turned green in under a second.
Dan wrenched free of her slack grip and shot for the ground. His boots hit stone. "VICTORY!" Both fists went up.
Something warm and wet landed on his head.
"Ewwwww! Mom! *NOOOO!*"
He bolted, but the rain followed him across the courtyard. In seconds he was coated in his mother's breakfast.
Lizzy came down in a crash, boots skidding, knees wobbling. Arthur caught her before she hit the stones face-first. She was milk-pale. She clapped both hands over her mouth, spotted the royal flower bed, and gave it everything she had.
Arthur rubbed her back and sighed, fighting a smile, then walked over to his dripping son. "So, Dan. What have I told you about using spatial magic on your mother?"
"She started it!" Dan crossed his slimy arms and glared at the sky.
Arthur went back and knelt beside his wife. "Are you okay?"
"Do I look like—" Another wave hit her and she folded back into the flowers.
"Early morning, and this is what I walk into."
Flynn came down the marble steps at an easy stride. Blond hair bound behind his back, light leather armor built for speed, a gilded longsword at his hip. His blue eyes swept the scene.
"Uncle Flynn!" Dan forgot the vomit and sprinted at him, launching himself into the air.
Flynn caught him like a cat. His whole face softened. "You remember me? The last time I saw you, you were six."
"Mom says I have an insanely good memory!" Dan grinned as Flynn held him up by the armpits like a puppy.
"At least you took something useful from your father." Flynn shook his head, smiling. "Welcome to the castle, Your Highness."
"Don't call me that!" Dan pouted as Flynn swung him onto his shoulder. "I found out I'm a prince *a few days ago.* Now I have to study and learn etiquette and take boring classes. I don't want to be a prince!" He poked at Flynn's neat eyebrows.
"You've got Arthur's anti-royalty streak, through and through." Flynn gave the King a dry look.
"Now I feel like a lazy bum," Arthur sighed. Then a wicked grin spread across his face. "By the way, Flynn. You do know Dan's covered in Lizzy's vomit?"
Flynn's eyes went wide. Three blurred movements later, Dan was back on the ground and Flynn was frantically scrubbing green slime off his pristine leather shoulder.
Arthur snickered. Dan collapsed into giggles with him.
"H-hey, Flynn." Lizzy raised a trembling hand from the flowerbed. "How've you been?" She waved limply and went back to watering the royal soil.
"Defiling the palace garden on arrival. What is wrong with you?" Flynn rubbed his temples and turned on Arthur. "I thought we agreed never to force her into spatial magic."
"It wasn't me!" Arthur raised both hands. "The boy wonder did it."
Dan had already wandered off. He was halfway up a marble angel holding a spear.
"Wait. He can use spatial displacement? Since when?" Flynn stared. "I can't teleport."
"Banning his magic wasn't going to work." Arthur folded his arms, watching Dan scramble onto the angel's shoulders. "If he's going to control that much power, he needs to understand it deeply."
"And the core seal?" Flynn's voice dropped.
"Fully active. He can't draw on more than a tenth of his draconic strength."
"And he's doing that with a tenth?" Flynn laughed, and a cold sweat ran down his neck. "God help us."
"I'm going to sleep," Lizzy announced to the dirt.
Before either man could turn—
BOOM.
A shockwave tore across the courtyard. Lizzy launched herself into the sky in an explosion of speed, whipping the trees and blasting Arthur and Flynn's hair back. She circled the high towers in a red-and-white blur, shot through an open third-floor balcony, and was gone.
–---
"Arthur." The banter had left Flynn's voice. "Something happened. You need to hear it."
"What?" Arthur's golden eyes narrowed. He'd caught the shift immediately.
"It's about Amag." Flynn kept his voice low. "We've had soldiers posted outside the capital walls and at random checkpoints. You remember the artificial prodigy their leaders were trying to engineer?"
"We've been hunting their cells for years. Since before I took the throne." Arthur's jaw tightened. "They've been quiet lately—"
"Haki caught the weapon they built." Flynn cut in. "We think they were smuggling her and a keeper out of the territory."
"Her?" Arthur frowned. "Do you mean..."
"A human. A child." Flynn's eyes were grim.
"I knew they'd go to sick lengths for their cause, but dragging children into it..." A dark aura flickered around Arthur's shoulders.
"From the keeper and the transport guards, before they died: she was bred in an underground lab. Artificially brought into existence." Flynn paused. "The keeper died before we got deeper. But she's dangerous, Arthur. What do we do with her?"
"What do you mean, "what do we do? She's a kid, we can't—"
"She's roughly Dan's age. Maybe a bit older." Flynn's voice stayed flat. "And she fought Haki, our top vanguard, to a standstill for an hour."
Arthur went silent. His golden eyes darkened. "Now I see why you're asking." He rubbed his chin. "That's terrifying. But she's still a child. We can't treat her like a monster."
"Kids raised like that, conditioned from birth and fed orders until they follow them to the letter, rarely break free of it." Flynn didn't back down. "We can't afford a mistake. One bad call could put the whole kingdom at risk."
"Where is she?"
Flynn knew that look. It was the one Arthur used to get on the road, right before something reckless.
"Anti-mana chains built for high-tier monsters. The lowest level of the royal dungeon." He sighed.
"I'll see her myself. There has to be a way that doesn't end in an execution." Arthur turned on his heel. "Hey, Dan! We're going to—"
He stopped.
The courtyard was empty. The angel statue stood bare, its spear pointing at the sky.
Dan was gone.