Chapter 136: ~Chapter 49~ Part 2

"It's smaller than I expected," I mused as I looked at the neat white line on the right side of Emese's lower back, just under the kidneys. At the moment she was standing with the help of her husband, and she looked supremely embarrassed, probably because of the way her pants were pulled down a little so that I could take a good look at her scar while I was crouching behind her.

After observing her already healed wound for a moment, I asked, "Does it still hurt?"

"A little," she told me in a low voice.

"According to the doctors, the injury caused by the spear damaged her pelvis and grazed the sciatic nerve," Sebastian supplied the details, and I hummed as if I had any idea of what he was talking about.

"And you actually threw an armored guy across a table with an injury like that?" I asked as I gingerly touched the scar, earning me a hiss that sounded more surprised than pained.

"Adrenaline," she told me just a little bit sheepishly, then added, "At the time I didn't even realize how bad it was. I thought it only hurt so much because I was in my Draconic form, and it was only after the fight was over that I realized I couldn't move my right leg properly."

"Hmm…" I let out a suitably brooding sound as I considered what she just said. "Does that mean that getting stabbed didn't disrupt your transformation?"

"No, it just hurts," she told me curtly.

"So the curse of the spear doesn't directly prohibit transformation," I stated as I stood up. "Does that mean you could transform if you wanted to right now?"

Mama Dracis hurriedly pulled up her pants to cover her skin, and only then did she tell me, "I tried to do that in the past, but when I do, it hurts a lot. Not just the wound, but my whole body feels like it's on fire, down to my bones. It's a thousand times worse than usual."

"Hold on," I halted her explanation with a raised palm. "Please don't tell me you are in constant pain…"

"Not constant," she told me while gesturing for Sebastian to get her wheelchair, but I once again stopped them by shaking my head, so after sending me an annoyed glance the lady of the house dourly stated, "It is nerve damage, and it tends to flare up at the most inopportune of times."

"Then I suppose we best do something about it," I told them with a (hopefully) reassuring smile as I crouched down once more. Abram was just about to make her wife's scar visible again, but I told him, "No need, I can work through the clothes. I just needed to know where exactly the wound was."

After saying that, I took a deep breath and placed my hand on Emese's back. I couldn't see any magical glow around her scar, but that didn't mean there was nothing to be done, so I gently poked the area with my Phantom Limb, aaaaand… there was no reaction whatsoever. That wasn't a good start.

However, it was too early to throw in the towel, so I took a deep breath and reached 'deeper', at least metaphysically speaking, which mainly felt like I was swimming in a river of syrup in a completely black space that tasted like iron and dried coconuts, until I have reached Emese's 'core', so to speak. I forced down the slowly rising sensation of nausea by slowly counting to ten and then I took a closer 'look' at the 'object' I was observing.

The best way to describe it would be to say that it was a giant, multi-layered ball of yarn the size of a family sedan, with each layer composed of thousands upon thousands of small, constantly shifting two-dimensional filaments that simultaneously looped upon themselves and at the same time connected to each other and yet reached into the infinite distance at the same time. In short, it was really trippy.

Now, the last time I attempted to touch the core of something, it resulted in me getting an absolutely terrible headache and a giant cacophony of mugs, so this time I was considerably more cautious in the endeavor.

As such, I steeled my nerves and ever so lightly poked said core, and even that was enough to fill my poor brain with a flash-flood of weird, organic, and decidedly non-Euclidian torrent of information. Maybe it was because I was already a little more familiar with this kind of phenomenon due to my previous exposure to this 'space that makes no sense', I managed to keep my calm and cut the connection. For the next couple of subjective minutes, the ever-so-helpful part of my mind that was at least somewhat familiar with these things organized the information I gleaned from the experience, and while I had no proper words for what I just 'learned', it kind of felt like a piece of some enormous mathematical equation, except with colors instead of numbers and angry koalas instead of symbols. I know that doesn't make a lick of sense, but at this point it would probably make less sense if it did.

Anyhow, this didn't really help me with the task at hand, but I came too far to turn back now, and since there was thankfully no sign of the infernal headache so far, I decided to keep poking the 'core' in front of me until I could find something useful.

As far as my personal perception of time was concerned, I was doing this for a solid hour before I decided to take a break. In that time, I have managed to conclude that the different layers corresponded to stuff like the body, the unconscious mind, memories, history, relationships, current thoughts, and all kinds of other stuff that was constantly cross-referenced between the layers and ultimately formed a coherent whole which was, in this case, a person.

If I had to make an estimate, I would've said that if I wanted to completely map out all the layers of the core, it would have taken me a solid month or more, though I once again had a nagging feeling that I was doing things in an incredibly inefficient way, and if I was doing this 'properly', I could do it all in seconds and then freely turn her into a pterodactyl with a monocle and a top-hat or something. While I found that image somewhat amusing, another part of me was quite vehement about that being an extremely bad idea and one that I shouldn't even consider as a joke, and it was so oddly reasonable I had to wonder if I developed a tiny little Judy in my head.

Jokes aside, once I figured out where I should be searching, I started combing the 'layer' responsible for the body of my patient, so to speak, and once I zeroed in on the target, it didn't take long to find the portion I was looking for. Once I digested that, I decided it was time to take a proper break, as my brain was starting to feel like an overstuffed bookcase with the index missing, so I slowly withdrew my Phantom Limb, and after going through the whole 'swimming in a nauseating syrup-river' thing in reverse, I let out a huge, pent-up breath and almost fell on my ass in the process.

Thankfully I managed to regain my balance in the last second, though not before Sebastian could reach out and support me by my shoulder. Insert a grumble about it being unnecessary and him being thoughtful being creepy, et cetera. Anyhow, once I reoriented myself, I quickly asked, "For the record, how much time has passed?"

Papa Dracis and his hidden ancestor shared a meaningful look between each other and at long last he told me, "If you mean since you put your hand on her back, then about ten seconds."

"Really? That's surprising," I muttered as I shook off the old butler's hand and carefully rose to my feet. This meant that the time-dilation was even more pronounced this time than when I was manipulating enchantments. Speaking of which, I gestured for the man behind me and asked, "Sebastian, could you please give me the spear for a moment? I want to cross-reference something."

To his credit, he didn't bother with asking any silly questions, and instead he immediately walked over to the poker table, picked up the spear, and came back to my side. I absent-mindedly reached out towards it, only to get my right thumb zapped for my trouble, forcing me to jerk my hand back in the company of a series of stifled curses.

"… with a bloody grapefruit spoon!" I ended my swearing session while shaking my hand until the feeling returned to it, and only then did I notice that both Abram and Emese were looking at me funny, which was actually fairly understandable. More alarmingly, the old man was giving me a look that said he was actually expecting something like this would happen and he found it really amusing, so I sent him a silent glare in return before I faced the other two and excused myself by saying, "Sorry, but this oversized toothpick really seems to hate me for some reason. Just give me a moment."

After saying so, I reached out once again, this time already prepared for the shock, and I firmly grabbed onto the weapon and took it out of Sebastian's hands, only to then swiftly smack it against the floor a couple of times, startling my hosts in the process. It took a good four whacks to stop the spear from resisting, plus two more, just for good measure, and once it did, I faced Emese again and told her, "Sorry for the intermezzo; let's continue."

"I'm no longer sure this is a good idea," Mama Dracis whispered under her breath as I crouched down again.

"Don't worry, dear. Leonard knows what he is doing… I think…?"

I ignored Abram's anemic efforts of coming to my defense and instead I once more focused on the task at hand. First, I quickly glanced at the magical innards of the spear in my hand, and once I peeled away all the superfluous bits and pieces surrounding the core enchantment, I spent some time memorizing the 'curse' parts of its effects. It took a considerably longer time and much more effort than I originally planned on, as the part of my mind that was inexplicably clued into the workings of my powers (and yet refused to share, the git) kept throwing up red flags at every turn and stopping me from manipulating even the slightest details.

Still, after I felt confident enough, I withdrew from the enchantment and turned to my prospective mother-in-law again, then I warned her, "I'm going to try something. I have no idea whether or not it will hurt, so please bear with it for a moment."

She only gave me a determined nod, her mouth set in a thin line as she no doubt clenched her teeth in preparation for whatever I was about to do. I also took a deep breath to focus my attention and dived right back into her metaphysical representation of extra-dimensional non-Euclidian space or something.

Once I reached her core and found the relevant bit, I began to slowly and meticulously comb through her… well, I wanted to say 'data', but that just didn't feel right. Calling them just 'strings' also felt wrong. In the end, I decided on 'records', at least until I found a more apt designation for the phenomena I was reading at the moment. Maybe I should ask Judy later, I mused as I continued to work, only to stop the moment I found something.

"Jackpot," I… well, I didn't say it, because I was disembodied at the moment, yet the word that somehow emanated from me seemed to send waves through the very fabric of the geometrically impossible space I currently occupied. It honestly freaked me out for a moment; I was honestly worried I might've broken something. After waiting for some time for the waves to die down, I let out an implied breath of relief and decided not to do that again any time soon.

Anyhow, back to the thing I found: If I wanted to describe what it was, it was kind of like an imprint the spear's enchantment left on Emese's body. It was not immediately obvious at first glance, but more like how the west coast of Africa and the east coast of South America roughly fit together because they used to be part of the same super-continent.

Putting my analogies aside, I focused my attention on this imprint, and once I isolated it from the rest of the 'records', I attempted to interface with it through the supernatural stratum, only to get shouted at by the back of my own brain, as if I was trying to jump into a bonfire or something.

Okay, so the direct approach didn't work. Apparently, just like the spear itself, this 'wound' was a plot device that I wasn't supposed to touch, and the knowledgeable corner of my mind made it quite obvious that trying to do so was a really, really bad idea. Unfortunately, I already made a promise. Not to mention, I wasn't exactly well-known for following rules, even if they were rules set by me. As such, I attempted to analyze the curse once again, against my own judgment, because I decided so, even though I really didn't want me to do it. Man, I was confusing…

After doing a lot of skirting, non-intrusive probing, and using the other half of the enchantment from the spear as a reference, I managed to put together a rudimentary 'map' of the curse. Or rather, it was more like a diagram? Like one of those wiring ones… or maybe like a circuit board? I could probably spend an hour trying to describe this confusing thing and still couldn't make it sound like it made sense, so let's move on to the meaty part of the discovery: the curse was actually really rudimentary in its execution.

Its goal of disabling the Draconic transformation was really obvious even from a single glance, however, for some absolutely baffling reason, it didn't actually inhibit the actual process of the physical changes, but instead it overwhelmed the nervous system with signals to stop the victim from completing the transformation. I had no idea why that was the case, and I even wasted some time checking if maybe it was impossible to do it the 'obvious' way, yet no matter how I looked at it, disabling the physical shape-shifting was in no way more difficult than the option they ultimately went with. Now granted, whoever enchanted this weapon probably didn't have access to the supernatural stratum the way I did, but it was still a pretty circumspect way to achieve the same goal.

Furthermore, the longer I looked into it, the more baffled I was by the 'imprint'. It also inhibited any healing relying on 'the essence of the dragon' (there was that oddly specific tag again…), but what was the point of doing so when the victim couldn't transform in the first place? Not only that, it had an entire set of anti-tampering and security measures interwoven into the entire imprint, none of which actually tied into any other parts that would lead to adverse effects upon breaking them. It was as if someone installed a state-of-the-art security system in their house, but didn't link it to any alarms or the police. It was downright nonsensical.

In fact, looking at the curse as a whole, it reminded me of a single term: 'spaghetti code'. It's a programming term for convoluted source codes where, usually due to multiple iterations of the code being built on top of each other, the end product ends up a tangled mess. What I was looking at felt pretty much the same; as if someone took some already existing enchantments and effects, smashed them together, and once they confirmed that it worked they moved on without trimming off the unneeded parts or checking for errors… And that gave me an idea.

Once I had that, I immediately jumped back into the work without any further ado and began to analyze the 'wiring diagram' in front of me. My goal was simple, yet really difficult at the same time: breaking the curse would've been fairly easy, and it wouldn't have caused any side effects due to the disconnected safety seals, yet doing so was something that at this point I knew was a bad idea as firmly as I was sure the sun was rising on the east. However, just like with the spear, my aversion to manipulating it only applied to doing so with my Phantom Limb, not by other means. What other means I had at my disposal, you may ask? To put it bluntly, I was planning on simulating the supernatural equivalent of a system-crash by subtly tweaking things in a way so it would look like the curse collapsed on itself due to its terrible 'coding'.

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Of course this was infinitely easier said than done, but I absolutely relished the challenge, and the more absorbed I became in the process, the more I felt in sync with the part of me that seemed to have some form of knowledge about these things, and before I knew it, I actually managed to find a couple of 'strings' that looked perfect for the job. I double-checked everything, just to be sure, then triple-checked my double-checks to be extra sure, and only then did I carefully extended my ethereal appendage and slowly, ever so slowly, tied together a few of them, all the while on the lookout for any changes or red flags popping up somewhere.

The whole process felt like it took ages, even with the apparent time-dilation, but once I was done and did a quadruple-check, just to be on the safest side, I pretended to exhale a breath of relief and slowly withdrew from the meta-space I was in, and I once again nearly fell on my butt in the process.

More alarmingly, when I regained my wits I noticed that I was drenched in sweat and my hands were slightly trembling.

"Well, this doesn't seem good," I muttered as I was subsequently hit by a rush of nausea and nearly fell backward, my involuntary tumble once again stopped by the intervention of Sebastian.

"What happened? Are you all right?" At the moment Abram seemed to be torn between supporting her wife or coming to my aid, so I raised a hand to halt him and forced a smile on my face to show him I was okay. It apparently didn't work, as he only looked even more concerned, so I quickly cleared my throat and, with the unsolicited yet not entirely unwelcome help of Sebastian I successfully rose to my feet.

"I think I overdid it a little bit. Don't worry; I should be back to normal in a moment or five." My slightly shaky words still didn't seem to completely persuade them, so I decided to quickly change the topic by turning to Lady Emese and asking, "More importantly, are you all right?"

"I'm… fine, I think," she muttered while looking at me like I was a ghost or something, but then she tried to completely turn around, only to let out a low hiss.

"Before you move around any more," I halted her with a raised (if slightly trembling finger), "First try to transform."

She was confused for a moment, but after some more wordless urging using my patented brand of eyebrow-wriggling, she hesitantly took a deep breath while still supported by Abram. That soon changed as her whole body abruptly shuddered and, with a surprised gasp, she took half a step forward, accompanied by a series of ripping sounds as her clothes couldn’t handle the physical changes of her transformation, and I swear to god, I nearly got my eye poked out by a button flying off her outfit.

After a short yet long second, the previously pale and somewhat frail-looking lady completely disappeared. In her place stood a tall, fit woman with a full set of horns adorning her head and a long, muscular tail trailing behind her, and as she straightened herself, a pair of large, leathery wings sprouted from her back, completing the Draconic look… and nearly knocking down the ceiling lamp in the process.

Mama Dracis let out a surprisingly girlish yelp and pulled her wing back, but in her hurry she managed to whack her husband right in the face with her other one. Then, in a spectacular demonstration of slapstick chain reaction, Papa Dracis fell back and into one of the chairs, which then immediately buckled over backward and he landed with a meaty thud.

For lack of anyone else, I sent a deadpan glance at Sebastian, and the old man's expression perfectly mirrored mine. Sometimes the oddest of things could make the strangest bedfellows, I supposed.

In the meantime, Emese regained her balance and finally noticed what happened, and she immediately rushed over to her husband's side, seemingly without any thinking.

"Ah, Darling! I'm so sorry, I didn't think I… I…" She came to a stuttering pause as she looked down at her own two legs, and after glancing at the man still lying on the floor, she muttered, "I can… walk?"

"You can walk!" Abram immediately repeated after her as he jumped to his feet and grabbed his wife by the hips. "Are you all right? Does it hurt anywhere?"

"I'm… I'm all right!" she beamed at her confused husband and suddenly hugged him with all her might. "Nothing hurts! Absolutely nothing!"

Then she laughed. It was a burst of pure, clear laughter, like spring water bubbling up from under layers and layers of silt, determined to wash them all away, and it was answered by a series of relieved chuckles from the man hugging her with all his might. Emotions were running high in the room, and I would've been lying if I said I wasn't a little touched, but at the moment I still had to deal with the aftermath of my actions, so I gestured for the butler to take the spear from me. He did so without a word, and once my hands were free, I quickly grabbed hold of one of the chairs in the room and sat down before my legs could've decided they supported me for long enough already.

Once I took a seat I immediately took several long, deep breaths, and successfully managed to get both the feeling of vertigo and the trembling under control. While I did that, Sebastian looked over me with considerable interest (and maybe just a hint of concern) in his eyes, and he only spoke up when he deemed I was not going to die on the spot.

"May I ask how you did that?" he asked me while using his head to gesture towards the elated couple, who in the meantime has moved on to kissing each other in relief. I saw no harm in explaining things to him, so I said:

"In short, I've short-circuited the part of the curse that makes the Draconic transformation hurt. The rest of it is unfortunately still intact, but I figured being able to walk on her own two legs was the most important part to accomplish first, so I decided to go for that."

"So she is not fully healed?"

"Unfortunately no, but I'd say if she kept transforming back and forth a couple of times every day, it would soon wear the curse down to the point where her injuries should start healing."

"Truly?"

"I suppose. Sadly I have no idea of the time-scale, and I'm too exhausted to check, but hopefully she shouldn't need her wheelchair anymore by the time Elly's birthday rolls around."

"Mom?"

I blinked in surprise as a new voice entered the fray, and I glanced over to the source. There, I found the princess frozen in the doorway, her eyes as wide as saucers as she was looking at the scene in front of her. Once the enthusiastic lovebirds realized their daughter was in the room, they quickly untangled themselves, and when that allowed Elly to take a better look at her mother, she let out a shocked gasp and she much less walked than leaped over to her side.

"Mom! You are… What happened!?"

While the two were reunited, in a certain sense of the word, my dearest assistant also made her way into the room and made her way over to me. Once she got into earshot, I sent her a rueful glance and told her, "You had one job, Dormouse. One, single, job."

"It couldn't be helped," she answered with just a hint of sulkiness in her voice. "How was I supposed to stop her coming in when you made such a ruckus?" I wanted to tell her that she should've improvised or something, but before I could do so she suddenly leaned closer to me. "Chief, you are pale as a sheet. What happened?"

"The usual," I told her with a disinterested shrug. "More importantly, we should—"

I got exactly that far when my dodging senses suddenly flared up and tried to have me dive out of the way. As it would happen, I wasn't exactly in the right shape to do that, so instead I had to take the full brunt of a blonde comet colliding with my chest in a flying tackle, nearly blowing me off the chair if not for Judy's support. Once the stars finally stopped circling around in my vision, I glanced down and, unsurprisingly, I found the Princess giving me an enormous, ribcage-cracking bearhug.

"Thank you, Leo. Thank you…" she whispered to me between sniffles.

I glanced over at her parents, then at Judy at my side, and I ultimately tussled her hair and bit and told her, "Happy birthday in advance, I suppose."

My words only seemed to crack the dam open even wider, as she went from sniffles to outright sobbing and she squeezed my chest even harder. It was actually hurting quite a bit, so I quickly sent a pleading glance at her parents. Regrettably, probably because of their emotional state at the moment, they completely misunderstood my intent, and instead of helping me with my predicament, Lady Emese walked over, lowered herself to one knee by my side, and proceeded to hug the both of us at the same time.

"Thank you. I am forever in your debt," she told me, her expression telling me that she was also just a hair's breadth away from breaking out into sniffles.

"You're… welcome…" I squeezed out the words, and was just about to request that maybe, if possible, she could stop the situation escalating any further, but then all of a sudden we were all trapped in an even bigger hug, as Abram sneaked up behind me (which wasn't a small feat, considering the man's size) and he swept all of us up in his arms, which incidentally also included Judy.

With that, there was only one person in the room I could turn to, as insane as the thought might've sounded, yet when I peeked at him between the arms and heads that composed the ball of bodies that currently encased me, Sebastian only gave me an odd look. Then, after locking gazes with him for several seconds, he let out a sigh, rolled his eyes, and then said, "If you insist…"

Then he walked over and joined the group hug by holding onto Papa and Mama Dracis.

…

Damn it old man, that wasn't why I was looking at you!

By this point the emotions in the room have once again reached their boiling point, with both Elly and Emese bawling their eyes out, Abram laughing like madman, and Judy… well, she was mostly just snuggling up to me like a well-fed cat. And then there was I, trapped in the middle of all of this and feeling… well, not too horrible, considering the situation. In fact, in some ways it was surprisingly cozy. It was different than when I cuddled with Judy and Elly, and it felt, for lack of a better word, wholesome.

I could've done with slightly less snot on my shirt though, but then again, no family is perfect. Mine was at least unique.

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