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“I don’t think my dungeons are suitable for holding dragons,” Valeria said without preamble when they arrived at the storm palace. “So what are you going to do with the prisoners?”

“I’ll take them if you want,” Alaryia said. “I do have the facilties to deal with prisoners and we can’t allow them to return to Mitakrian. Not when we’ve dealt his forces such a blow.” She paused and nodded at the still unconscious dragon that Lydia and Halia were dragging between them. “Except for that one. There’s something odd about him. I swear Mitakrian actually considered rescuing him and that’s well out of character. We need to question him.”

“But not here,” Naria said. “We need him somewhere we can restrain him. Halia’s healed and fed him but with how raw his essence was I’m not sure he’ll be able to fully resist frenzy anyway.”

“Fully resist?” Matthias asked. “You can partially resist?”

“Sometimes, yes,” she replied. “And when you do, you just lash out at everything rather than killing everything. It’s still not pleasant. I doubt anyone who didn’t know would notice the difference.”

Alaryia in the meantime had laid a hand on the unconscious dragon’s chest and closed her eyes. After a moment she gave a sharp angry hiss.

“Raw doesn’t begin to describe it. I’d be surprised if he’s been a dragon for more than a week.” She scowled down at him. “We can soothe that so he won’t frenzy but it’s still going to be wisest to have him restrained when we wake him.”

“And you can’t do that here?” Matthias asked.

“Not easily, no,” she said. “But we need to arrange to introduce your prisoner to Lady Elsed anyway. And Lyrrekka-ida’s daughters are waiting for her.” She nodded politely to the ice dwarf who inclined her head in response. “So there’s going to be some going back and forth.”

“True,” Matthias said. “But what do you intend to do with the other prisoners?”

“That depends,” she said. “If I can get them to sever and they’re relatively innocent, I’ll have a unicorn question them and parole them to my court. A lot of Mitakrian’s court just want a chance to escape. If they won’t sever but are relatively innocent, I’ll knock them into transition. If they’re not innocent I’ll have to hold them, which is unfortunate but unavoidable.”

“Why don’t you just kill them if they’re like their master?” Kyle asked.

“Because I don’t like killing people,” Alaryia said. “It solves nothing.”

“Okay, we’ll let you deal with the prisoners then,” Matthias said. He turned back to Valeria. “Is everyone here well?”

“Yes, they didn’t manage to extend their energy drain within the wards but…” Her voice shook as she nodded towards the deadened area beyond the wards. “What are we going to do about that? Everything is dead.”

“We’ll fix that!” Naria said. “It’s soon enough that if we replace the energy they took it should mostly be restored.”

“That’s very true,” Kelaria said. “And I’m happy to donate some of my energy to help. I’m sure the others are as well.” She looked around at them and they nodded. “Don’t worry, you majesty, we’ll get this fixed for you quickly.”

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