AN: This is the final chapter of Dragon Summoning. The crossover franchise will be named in the Author's Note at the end of the story. Sorry about not posting last Saturday, I simply didn't know how to end this thing. There's a reason plot bunnies generally remain plot bunnies, and not full-length stories...

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Dragon Summoning Chapter 9:

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Time passed, and Louise spent the next few months mostly with the N'bara sisters and her own elder sister. Once the foreign physicians finished treating those injured in the battle at Castle Valliere, one of them immediately took Cattleya to the Sky Tree's medical facilities, and scanned her with a variety of machines that Louise somewhat understood from Joshua's memories. She was diagnosed with a genetic disease, and was treated promptly with a retrovirus.

For the first month, Cattleya was bedridden, and attached to life support machines as her body sweated its way through a systemic overhaul. By the end of the second month, she had recuperated to her usual level of fragility, and after three, she was noticeably stronger. Much of her time in the Sky Tree's infirmary was spent discussing how the healers of Halkeginia had treated her disease thus far, as less than one in a billion people in Joshua's homeworld had the ability to treat such ailments with magic, whereas in Halkeginia, apparently any water mage with the discipline and skill was capable of doing so.

Louise's time was split between visiting the infirmary, an awkward prospect even though the Sky Tree had been designed and constructed with Dragons in mind, the N'bara family's generously sized quarters, and classes at the Tristain Academy. The N'bara sisters accompanied her almost everywhere, acting as her hands where her large forepaws simply were not capable of fine manipulation. They sat by the window she stuck her head in through for indoor classes, and on or beside her during outdoor classes. During off hours, the N'bara sisters helped her gain a more practical knowledge of the things she had seen in her dreams of Joshua's memories.

And her dreams of Joshua's life continued, though paced more slowly now, as they followed his life since coming to Halkeginia.

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Joshua spent the three months working out the terms of trade with Henrietta, briefing and training his new subordinates to effectively combat the mage-armies that Halkeginian's favored, very carefully spending time with Louise and his sisters, and visiting the catatonic Siesta. Like Henrietta, a good deal of his behavior was the result of deliberately burying himself in his work; also like Henrietta, it was just as much about the work needing to be done. As the diplomatic and military head for his people, he held the lion's share of authority; Henrietta, as the heir to the throne of Tristain, soon to inherit as her mother had little apparent interest in ruling, held a similarly important position.

This made them both essential to almost every facet of the developing trade between their nations, at least during their opening phase, as there was little familiarity or trust between the two factions. Joshua's people were untrusting of most of the Halkeginian nobility, due to their inflated sense of position and worth, and the Halkeginian nobility were condescending towards most all of Joshua's people as they were not 'nobles' themselves. As a Knight, and personal friend of the Princess, Joshua was the only man readily respected by the Tristainian and Germanian nobles; Henrietta, held in high regard by Joshua, lacking the condescending attitude of the Halkeginian nobility despite her own royal birth, and having first appeared before Joshua's people spattered with the blood of men she had personally been healing, was the only Halkeginian mage readily commanding respect from Joshua's people.

Accusations from the faculty that the soldier's amongst Joshua's people had stolen the 'Staff of Destruction' and possibly done away with the Headmaster's Secretary by the Tristain Academy's faculty, as both had apparently gone missing shortly before the Sky Tree came to the academy to begin construction work, nearly sparked armed conflict. Once it was revealed that the Sky Tree's infantry compliment stocked scores of the fire-and-forget shoulder-launched missile weapons that the 'Staff of Destruction' apparently had been, the faculty withdrew their suspicions, partly out of fear, especially once it became known that commoners were fully capable of deploying the weapons.

Joshua just added locating Longueville, the Headmaster's Secretary, to his to-do list, alongside finding a healer capable of restoring memories, and recovering Tabitha's mother. The final activity he engaged in, was acclimating himself to his new war machine, a Fast Assault model almost thirty percent larger than his old ride, massing more than one hundred metric tons, outfitted exclusively with laser and gauss weaponry.

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For Kirche, the three months after the battle of Castle Valliere were the greatest learning experience in her life. She had always been drawn to passion, attracted to intensity and ardor, and herself been a passionate woman.

But never before in her life, had she been a part of something larger than herself. Ever since she had tacitly sworn herself to support Henrietta in her crusade to remake Tristain, and now most likely Germania as well, she had been swept up into a veritable whirlwind of activity. The very day after Henrietta secured the funds to construct the new branch of the Tristain Academy, she sent Kirche to Germania to recruit students, both commoner and noble, for the new school. She spent a month with one of the gunship pilots, a short man with a wry sense of humor by the name of Asuma Solberg, recruiting from the duchies of Germania, both the nobility and the common folk. It was probably easier than what Henrietta herself was doing in Tristain, as Germanians were already accustomed to the idea of nobility who were not magi.

She also wore much more modest clothing, and learned a great deal more about Joshua's past, and part of why he had so readily spurned her advances. Unlike Halkeginian magi, or most magi from his world, Joshua's part-dragon race were capable of magic without a focus, and, indeed, all that was required for their magic to become active was lack of control during moments of strong emotion, or great passion. Due to their inherent resistance to their own magical elements, they stood little to no chance of self-injury, but physical intimacy was almost guaranteed to be fatal for anyone not benefiting from similar immunities.

Not to mention that such encounters tended to play havoc upon their surroundings, meaning any paramour of Joshua would have to be willing to withdraw to some place that could be thoroughly destroyed without cost any time a private rendezvous was desired. On the whole, Kirche was considering for the first time, that she may have set her sights upon a man who was more than she was prepared to handle. Considering how difficult Louise's transformation had been, and what Solberg had told her about the mortality rate involved in that kind of change, she at least understood why Joshua's race of Dragonbloods were so set upon monogamy.

She had a feeling there was more to it than simply fear of killing any sexual partners they may have had, however, as she was fairly certain that Joshua had been at least somewhat receptive to the now-catatonic maid's affections, even though he had not been to her own.

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Jean Colbert was very nearly in paradise, though out of respect for those lost at Castle Valliere, he carefully restrained his enthusiasm when around Henrietta and the other survivors of the battle. These newcomers had taken the concepts he had been tinkering around in his laboratory with, multiplied and advanced them a thousand-fold, and built a society based upon them. One that while capable of magic, was in no way dependent upon it. It was everything Colbert had ever hoped and dreamed for, and he was being placed in a key role to uplift Tristainian society to a similar level of technological enlightenment.

He found the differences between the two world's magical systems even more fascinating; unlike the Halkeginian five-element system, the magi of Joshua's world used a nine element system, though each was individually less capable than any single one of the Halkeginian elements. While Knight N'bara's rare breed of Dragon hybrids possessed some capabilities Halkeginian magic was incapable of, that mostly devolved to their form manipulation, and immunity to their own elements of magic.

The foreign magi grouped their elements according to type; Earth, Water, and Air also being referred to as Solid, Liquid, and Gas, which he was rapidly beginning to understand the significance of as he devoured their scientific texts. The second group contained Fire and Ice, or more strictly thermal activity and inactivity; the properties of this pair of elements had frustrated the scientists of the other world, as they could not understand the arbitrary balance point between temperatures that were the domain of the one, or the domain of the other. The third grouping was Light and Shadow, and it was this pair that completely defied scientific quantification; Colbert did not fully understand the optical and 'photonic' mechanics involved, so left in depth study of that until after the new branch of the Academy was established, and he had more free time.

The final pair of elements bore no particular relationship to each other, and were grouped together primarily because they functioned differently than the three primary groupings. The 'Life' element appeared for completely unknown reasons, sometimes even cropping up in those who were not of mage descent, and was, in essence, the ability to manipulate life in one form or another. Electricity, also sometimes known as Thunder or Lightning, was mostly similar to the other elements, in that it let the wielder manipulate Electricity, and electromagnetic fields (something Colbert was only just beginning to truly understand), it was different primarily in that it only appeared amongst the Dragon hybrid race that Joshua, his sisters, and now young Miss Valliere were members of.

Some things, such as a Halkeginian Wind mage's ability to both manipulate the air, and create illusions, the magi from Joshua's world could perform, though they would require use of two different elements. Others, such as creating a copy of oneself, as per Karin's extremely powerful clone spell, the outworlder magic was absolutely and utterly incapable. Fundamentally, each element of their magic system was capable exclusively of manipulating its element; 'Earth' would manipulate matter in a solid state, 'Water' would manipulate matter in a liquid state, 'Fire' would heat, or to a certain limit, draw the heat out of a material, and so on and so forth. The only limitation was that a mage could not manipulate a living body directly, unless they were overwhelmingly powerful, as the very nature of being alive seemed to impose some sort of barrier to direct manipulation on the part of magic in Joshua's world. 'Life' magic was the sole exception to this rule, as it utterly bypassed this defense, and working exclusively with living bodies.

Colbert desperately desired time for a more in depth study of the differences in the two world's magic, but he simply was too busy.

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Karin spent the next three months in the Sky Tree's brig, the beginning of a five-year prison term she had been sentenced to for her actions against Captain N'bara by military tribunal. By direct order from the Crown of Tristain, she accepted the punishment.

Her husband was not pleased to discover what had become both of his castle, and his wife, when he returned home, but submitted to the Crown's orders, and rather than raise strife, worked with survey teams from the Sky Tree to locate deposits of useful metals on Valliere land for trade.

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Siesta was aware, but little more could be said for her; her brain stem, spine, and non-central nervous system were attempting to interact with a brain that, while physically regenerated, no longer was wired appropriately to handle the incoming data, and was foundering under the assault of sensory data from the rest of her body. She was not in pain, but little else could favorably be said about her condition, except that her hair was growing back in, which the N'bara sisters took time to groom when they visited with Louise, Henrietta, or their brother.

It was during one of their brushing sessions that Siesta began to come out of her catatonic state, shifting to allow them easier access to her hair. The movement was so subtle that the N'bara sisters did not really notice it, and Louise wasn't certain enough of what she had seen to really believe it herself, much less mention it to others.

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Time passed. Henrietta devoted a great deal of time and energy to the organization of the new branch of the Tristain Academy, construction, staffing, organization, furniture, tools, teaching supplies, in all, it was no small undertaking. She also dealt with her mother and Cardinal Mazarin to secure funds both for the academy's construction, and to trade with Joshua's people. Further, she spent one day each week flying to a given portion of Tristain, to recruit students for her school amongst the commoners, and to consult with local healers.

The royal healers, and Henrietta herself, had been able to repair the physical damage to Siesta, but her mind was another matter. Those of Henrietta's guardsmen who had survived the battle at Valliere castle were either healed without too much trouble, or outfitted with replacement cybernetics and cloned organs by Joshua's people.

There was also the political fallout of Joshua's people having killed the King of Gallia to deal with.

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"Charlotte," Henrietta said, addressing the taciturn girl who was sitting on the windowsill of the Royal Library in the Royal Palace of Tristain beside her familiar's sleeping body, "I understand that you do not like to speak of what happened to your family and your nation, but the Gallian nobility is threatening Tristain with war if we do not 'hand over the King's murderers.'"

The tiny blue-haired girl lowered her book, and stared at it sadly. Henrietta glanced at Joshua, who had accompanied her for the conversation,

"The nobility killed my father," She said quietly, "And hold my mother hostage against me. I can do nothing."

"The nobility of Gallia are threatening my people," Joshua put in, "And I am quite confident of our ability to defeat them. The problem is, if we simply slay the belligerent nobles, it will leave anarchy and a power struggle amongst the survivors. What we need are two things, first, to know where your mother is, so that we may retrieve her, and second, would the common folk of Gallia accept you as their new ruler?"

Tabitha carefully set down her book, and curled in on herself. Joshua tensed slightly, feeling the desire to comfort the girl, but knew he was too much a stranger for that to be wise. Henrietta had no such compunctions, and promptly sat down beside the smaller girl, then wrapped her arms around the smaller girl. Joshua chose to withdraw and give the two some privacy.

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Three hours later, Henrietta left the Royal Library, the front of her dress rather conspicuously wet.

"She's asleep," Henrietta said softly, "Sylphid is looking after her. But she did tell me where her mother is."

"I'll organize a rescue," Joshua said, bowing slightly to Henrietta, then leaving.

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The small castle that the Royal Duchess d'Orleans was being held in was, on the whole, an ugly structure. Really more of a fortified keep than a castle proper, it was basically a box that was slightly taller than it was wide or long, and just large enough that a noble of modest wealth wouldn't be embarrassed to use it as their primary residence.

On the whole, it suited Joshua's mood perfectly. He could have, possibly should have, sent someone else to carry out this mission, but even if he wouldn't be on the front lines, he felt it was sufficiently his responsibility that he had to at least be present. Besides, even with his armor in place, he made far less noise than a gunship; with the storm that night, he was essentially undetectable. Still, unless something went wrong, the only role he would play now that the team was on the ground, was extraction.

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Along the exterior wall of the castle, a trio of armored figures, two men and one woman, carefully climbed up towards a particular third floor window. Optical cloaking devices reduced them to effective invisibility while immobile, and indistinct blurs while moving; the wind-blown rain moved the odds of unaugmented guards spotting them from 'near-impossible' to 'effectively non-existent.' Tiny pneumatic pistons backed ultra-hard alloy spiked that were controlled via cybernetic link, driving into and withdrawing from the stone wall as needed to allow the three infiltrators to climb the rain-slicked wall with ease.

Despite the rain, there were a full dozen guards posted about the castle's entrance and atop its roof; none spotted the infiltrators. Once they had ascended to the chosen window, chosen because it was barred, a fiber-optic cable was fed through a gap in the window frame. Within, they found a large, luxuriously furnished bedroom, with a woman sleeping in a large bed, and a second sleeping in a tidy cot beside the bed; no guards were present on the inside of the room. The bars of the window were, fortunately, not enchanted, and after withdrawing the probe, the simple application of a cutting laser was all that was necessary to quietly cut the bars loose.

Once the bars had been removed, the window was opened, and two of the three infiltrators swept near-silently into the room, the third closing it behind them, and remaining attached to the exterior wall. Quietly crossing the room, one of the pair moved to the door, and the other to the sleeping women. After a quick verification that the emaciated woman in the larger bed fit the description, and bore a clear resemblance to Charlotte d'Orleans, a sleeping gas was used on her, to assure she would not wake during extraction.

After a brief deliberation over the team's com link with Joshua, the maid in the cot was briefly woken to ask if she wished to leave with her mistress; after receiving a negative answer, she was knocked out as well. That taken care of, the Duchess was wrapped first in one of her own blankets, then in a thin water-proof sheet the infiltrators had brought with them, and extraction was called for. A few minutes later, two of the infiltrators were carefully carrying the Royal Duchess down the wall, while the third welded the bars carefully back into place, then filled in the irregularities with a bonding agent colored to resemble iron.

Less than an hour after they had been dropped into position a half-mile from the castle, Joshua descended to pick them up, and then began the journey back to Tristain, a pair of gunships falling into escort formation with him once he climbed above two thousand feet of altitude.

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By the time Charlotte's mother had been retrieved, the population of the 'Academy' had risen considerably, with the Sky Tree semi-permanently anchored just outside its walls, and the new branch rapidly being assembled. The assembly of the new branch in and of itself was an educational opportunity for the Halkeginians, as the Sky Tree's crew used heavy machinery to synthesize and pour concrete, steel-frame construction, and built in plumbing, electricity, and electronic grids as the new structures were assembled.

It was during this time that Siesta began to noticeably recover, and someone from her family in Tarbes was finally able to visit. One of her many younger brothers, Stephen, came both to see to his sister, and attend the school once it opened. A great deal of his perception of Siesta's crippled state, the presence of the outworlders, and Henrietta's academy project, was formed in how he came to the Sky Tree's infirmary, and what he found there. Rather than riding the Sky Tree's skyhook elevator, Joshua personally carried Stephen to the Sky Tree, greeting him by name after recognizing the young man from Siesta's stories of her home village. When they reached the Sky Tree, they were met by Louise, who was carrying Laura and Brianna, who spoke with them as they proceeded to the Sky Tree's infirmary, where they arrived during one of Henrietta's visits.

Finding the Princess of Tristain herself at his sister's bedside had a profound effect upon Stephen. Seeing another Princess the next bed over, trying to communicate with her clearly distraught mother, made things nearly seem a dream to him. The Sky Tree's doctors had been more than a little frustrated to discover that the Duchess d'Orleans mental ailment was not a physical malady, but some sort of magically-induced dementia, and they were unable to treat it.

Eventually, a lead on a healer that was potentially capable of treating, well, anything according to rumors turned up, from one of the surviving Albion Dragon Knights, ironically enough. There were tales of a healer hiding in the woods of northern Albion, one who could, and had, treat literally any affliction. It was a flimsy lead, but it was the best they had, and so Louise, Joshua, Tabitha, the two wounded women, and a small military detachment boarded cargo modules docked to three gunships, or in Louise's case took hold of a Gunship's hull, and flew to Albion.

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"I've never really seen a country at war before," Louise rumbled across the comm to Joshua.

"War is hell," Joshua said softly, as he looked out of the passenger compartment's window, down at a burning village and its surrounding fields some thousands of feet below, "There are few things worth going to war for, and all too often people wait too long to fight for them, making wars all the bloodier."

Louise said nothing, but when Joshua focused upon the magical bond between them, he could feel her sorrow. His attention was drawn away from the window by someone wrapping their arms around him, and hugging him firmly. Joshua tensed, before carefully turning to disentangle himself from Siesta's embrace. The young woman had managed to free herself from her seat's restraints, and while she couldn't walk unaided, she had recovered enough motor function to lurch across the narrow space of the passenger compartment to him.

Joshua found it both distressing and heartening, Siesta's behavior as she regained the ability to interact with the world around her. She was incredibly affectionate, smiling warmly at anyone who addressed her, and trying to hug anyone that she recognized. Joshua was encouraged that that facet of her personality had not been lost, but it made his heart ache to be held so intimately when her mind was effectively gone. That Siesta was an attractive young woman, and he was a twenty-something red-blooded male virgin sometimes provoked other difficulties, but he could largely deal with them by wearing his armor whenever he was around Siesta, putting a barrier between the two. Even if it made her pout.

The rest of the trip passed in silence, save for the occasional nonsensical mutterings of Charlotte's mother. It was hard for Joshua to look at Charlotte, and see the desperate hope in her eyes whenever she looked at her mother, knowing that they might very well be chasing down a false lead. Watching the girl interact with her mother, who did not even recognize her, had been heart-breaking. Eventually, they arrived at the forest that was located, as best they had been able to determine, where the Dragon Knight's directions lead.

"Deploying probes," Lieutenant Johann White, one of the Gunship pilots, called, and Joshua donned his helmet, engaging an uplink to the probe's sensor feeds.

Both gunships deployed a dozen simple probes, each built around a single electrically-powered engine, and equipped with audio, visual, and thermal sensors; the probes descended through the forest canopy, and spread out in a geometrically optimized search pattern. After two hours of trying half-heartedly to fend off Siesta's efforts to cuddle with him, the program running the probes brought a particular visual feed to Joshua, and the gunship pilot's, attention, revealing a picturesque cottage in one of the most remote parts of the forest. A pair of young women were herding a swarm of children into the cottage, one of which looked vaguely familiar to Joshua, and he spent the short trip to that section of the forest trying to place her.

Things were a bit tricky when they arrived, as the forest was particularly dense in that area, leaving no space for the gunships to land, and Louise was still not the smoothest of fliers, but she managed to awkwardly force her way through the forest canopy, landing clumsily on the forest floor, rather than crashing outright. Joshua himself, with his larger Dragon form, would have had to burn a hole through the canopy in order to be able to land at all, something that he did not think would have made a good first impression. Nearly crashing into the forest floor probably didn't help, but he hoped it would at least make them appear less threatening.

"Hello!" Joshua called as he leapt down off of Louise's back, stowing his helmet, "We come in peace!"

For a long moment, there was no response from within the modest cottage, then one of the adult women Joshua had seen emerged, staff in hand, and a hard look in her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by Louise.

"Madam Longueville!" Louise burst out, clearly surprised, and startling the green-haired women in turn, "You've been missing for months!"

Longueville stared at the large, pink, Dragon, and made an intuitive leap of logic.

"Miss Valliere?" She asked cautiously, "Is that you?"

"Yes," Louise said, nodding sharply, "Headmaster Osmond will be so relieved that we've found you, he's been drowning in paperwork without your help, and refuses to take on another secretary, claiming that none could fill your robes."

"I'm sure," Longueville said caustically, rolling her eyes, "Pervert man." Her voice turned sharp as her gaze turned to Joshua before she continued, "But what brings you here, Knight? Have you come for my head?"

"Hardly," Joshua said, "We came in search of a healer rumored to live within this forest. Do you remember the maid, Siesta?"

Longueville thought for a moment, then nodded.

"One of the Albion Dragon Knights took off part of her head. We've been able to heal the physical injury, but her mind is mostly gone, and we've yet to find a healer able to help."

"You would come all the way to norther Albion to seek healing for a commoner?" Longueville asked, disbelief evident both in her voice and on her face.

"Last I recall, Longueville," Joshua said, his voice turning hard, "You are no noble yourself. Besides, the other injured party we seek a healer for, is royalty."

Longueville was silent for a long time after that, staring Joshua in the eyes, Joshua staring right back, his posture switching back and forth between unyielding, and aggressive.

"Why didn't you mention the royal first?" Longueville eventually said.

"The Duchess d'Orleans is here because she matters dearly to a friend," Joshua said evenly, "Siesta is here because she matters to me."

"And me," Louise added quietly.

Quietly for a Dragon, anyways.

"And to Princess Henrietta, for that matter," Joshua said, shrugging.

Longueville looked back and forth between the two for nearly half a minute, before visibly coming to a decision.

"I will ask Tiffania if she will help," Longueville said, "But understand, if you hurt my sister, I will kill you."

Then she turned, and retreated into the cottage.

"Her sister?" Louise asked, confused, "I suppose that would explain why she's here, still, she could have told the Headmaster she was leaving."

"She's very protective," Joshua said, glancing at Louise, "And bitter. There's probably a connection; please try very hard not to provoke her."

After a few minutes, Longueville came back out, with a slightly shorter figure hiding behind her.

"This is Tiffania," Longueville said her voice gentle even as she glared at Joshua and Louise, "My sister. She has never encountered a wound she could not heal, though she tells me she has not dealt with mental damage before. She has agreed to help you."

The woman peeked over Longueville's shoulder, revealing blonde hair, blue eyes, and that the hood of her cloak was pulled down too far for much else to be revealed.

"Where is the injured girl?" Tiffania said in a tone every bit shy as the girl's behavior.

"Up above," Joshua said, "Can I have your permission to cut a hole in the tree canopy, so that we can bring the injured persons down here?"

Longueville looked over her shoulder at Tiffania, who nodded faintly.

"Thank you," Joshua said, then backed away from Louise and the others.

After a moment to focus himself, he initiated his own physical transformation, working for control rather than speed in the change, and keeping the display down to a brief wreath of steam shrouding his body and a slight tremble in the earth directly beneath him. Once he was large, furry, and equipped with a quartet of breath weapons, he gazed slowly around the cottage's small clearing, and selected a tree. He then manifested his sword, grasping it in his left hand, and severed the tree's trunk near the base with a single blow, blasting splinters and sawdust into the forest. Moving swiftly, he dismissed his sword, then leapt up and shoved the tree with the full force of his multi-ton body, causing it to fall back into the forest.

Joshua eyed the hole he had made in the canopy for a moment, before deciding it was adequate, then briefly summoning his helmet, and using its com to relay landing instructions to Lieutenant White. Task completed, he shifted back to his human form, then walked over to stand beside Louise again, and found Longueville and Tiffania staring at him. He simply stared back, until the gunship ferrying Charlotte, her mother, and Siesta descended through the treeline, and landed in front of the cottage.

Then Tiffania and Longueville stared at the gunship instead.

"I know you were summoned by Louise," Longueville eventually said, turning to face Joshua, "Just where were you summoned from?"

"A different world altogether," Joshua said as he walked over to the gunship, and helped Tabitha herd Siesta and her mother out of it, "If you wish to return to the Academy with us, we can show you more of what comes from my world."

He turned to face Tiffania, as he guided Siesta, who had latched onto him again and was smiling goofily, across the small clearing to the healer.

"Would you please see what you can do for her?" He asked, some strain entering his voice.

Tiffania nodded, and laid a hand on the maid's head; a hand that Joshua noticed had a ring on it. It was rather easy to notice, seeing as how the ring was glowing. Siesta went limp after a moment, so Joshua carefully lowered her to the ground, Tiffania crouching to maintain her grip on the young woman's head. After watching the healer work for a moment, and trying to sense what she was doing magically, Joshua stepped back.

Joshua, Louise said silently, immediately grabbing his full attention, as he was well aware that she was very uncomfortable communicating mentally with him.

Yes? He asked.

What would you have done if Tiffania had refused to heal Siesta? Louise asked.

I would have left, Joshua replied 'quietly.'

It was some time before Louise spoke again, and when she did, she was clearly very uncomfortable.

I've been seeing your memories in dreams since your first fight with Mother, she said.

I know, Joshua replied, I've been seeing yours.

Silence again.

How do you do it? Louise finally asked, I know what had just happened to you now, when I summoned you, fresh from the battlefield, your sisters rapist freshly dead at your hands. I know you felt the familiar bond attempt to invade your mind from the moment I kissed you, and fought it ever since. I know how much the bond enraged you, I know how violated what my mother did to you made you feel, I have felt your anger and outrage over what happened to Siesta, but you never once attacked any of the surviving Dragon Knights, or blamed Henrietta for not taking the wound Siesta did. You were kind to me almost from the moment I arrived, you forced yourself not to kill Sothos for his crimes, even after what happened to your sisters!

Louise was silent for a long moment, watching as Tiffania began to sweat over Siesta's limp form.

You spent months here, in my world, alone, your mind under assault, then your very body invaded, and when your people arrived in force, rather than prosecuting war upon us, you immediately sought to better the lives of every single person in Tristain, by sharing your nation's wealth of technology with us. Why?

For a moment, Joshua said nothing, then turned to her, and placed his head beside her enormous ear.

"Because of Grace," He whispered with a furious intensity, "Because of Love. Because I follow a God of Love, of Justice, of Grace, of Mercy. You have seen some of it in my memories, but you still do not understand. There is a standard of morality, an absolute standard, set by a perfect Divine example. Justice tempered by mercy and Grace, thus your mother pays for her crimes against me in prison, but is not killed out of vengeance, or subject to an equal punishment. Love and Compassion, because regardless of what you did to me unknowingly, if I did not help you, you would have died. Justice and Discipline, because while Sothos needed to be punished, he had not killed, and it would have only served to gratify my own sense of vengeance and anger to kill him outright."

Joshua took a deep breath before continuing.

"Love and Compassion, because it is pleasing to God to better the lives of every man, woman, and child, in every tribe, and tongue, and nation, regardless of world. My nation was founded by refugees from war, men and women fleeing from many different nations, and we found unity in our faith in God, in a belief that all are made in the Creator's Image, that we are all endowed with an incalculable worth, and that it is right, just, fulfilling, and pleasing to the Creator, for us to treat each other in an appropriate manner.

"Some of the nations my ancestors fled from were torn by war sparked by simple material greed, some sparked by men declaring that it was 'god's will' that they slay all those who defied their doctrine. My nation was formed on the belief that human life and dignity is a gift from God, and thus is sacred."

Joshua pulled back slightly, so that he could look Louise in the eyes, and spoke softly, for her ears only.

"When I first met you," He said gently, pain and compassion in his eyes and voice, "I saw a child with a broken heart, in need of Love. No matter what you did to me, or may yet do to me, through this magical bond that even now touches my mind, that will always be true. God made you precious, and though I needed to master my anger that first day before I could treat you appropriately, to treat you as anything less than priceless would be wrong."

Louise did not know what to say in response to Joshua's words, so she said nothing, feeling somehow as though her heart was both breaking, and being made whole, at the same time. After a full minute passed and Louise still said nothing, Joshua turned and stepped back, laying an arm around her large neck, just behind where it joined the back of her head, and hugging her reassuringly as best he could given their current disparity of sizes.

For some time, they silently watched the healer work together, Joshua feeling weak, and his heart aching from emotional exertion and painful memories, Louise trying to understand why his words, and the clear passion behind them, tugged at her heart so strongly and deeply. Eventually, the glow from Tiffania's ring faded, and she sat back with a sigh.

"I've done the best I can," Tiffania said softly, her voice gentle and slightly guilty, "It's better, but I don't know how much."

Then she stood, and moved over to Charlotte and her mother, the younger girl looking at Tiffania with desperate hope, the older woman looking at the blond in confusion. Smiling gently at the older woman, Tiffania slowly reached up with her hands, and laid them upon the woman's head, and the ring began to glow again.

"To answer your original question," Joshua said softly, "I would have left Tiffania be, because even if it would be wrong for her to deny Siesta and the Duchess aid, it would be a violation of her person for me to try and force her. If they were in danger of death, maybe it would be different, but barring that, I would become the villain if I did so."

Louise nodded faintly, then hesitated a moment before speaking as quietly as she could manage.

"Thank you, Joshua," She said, rubbing her head gently against him, "For what you have done for me, for my family, for my nation. Even for not killing my mother, for all that she has done wrong, I still love her."

"You're welcome," Joshua replied quietly, "It is no less than any man should do."

A moment of silence passed, cut short by Tiffania speaking again.

"It is done," She said tiredly, "That was a lot easier."

Louise and Joshua turned their attention towards her again, to find Longueville sweeping forward to keep her sister from falling in exhaustion, and the aged Duchess holding her daughter in as fierce a hug as her weakened arms could manage.

"Oh Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte," She said quietly, crying into her shorter daughter's hair, "I'm so sorry."

Charlotte simply clung to her mother desperately, and cried.

Joshua smiled sadly at the sight, and feeling his knees weak for some reason as he watched the family's tearful reunion, decided to sit down. Louise helped him down by lowering her head to support him, then sat down herself.

"Ah," Joshua said sadly, "Hope lives yet."

Then warm arms embraced him from his left side, and he turned to see Siesta smiling as she carefully wrapped herself around him.

"Joshua," She said happily, her smile bright enough to rival the sun, "So happy see you."

Joshua held her in returne, the sorrow leaving his smile, even as tears fell from his eyes.

"Hope lives indeed," He said quietly as Louise gently nuzzled the both of them, "Hope lives indeed."

((()))

The End, of Dragon Summoning.

((()))

AN: As my writing, and life, continue to develop and deepen, I find that more and more, things come back to the core principles of life. For those of you who read Brutal Harry, and the Author's Notes thereof, or picked up on the hint(s) in earlier chapters of this story, I'm a man of deep Faith. You could call me 'religious,' but the way the word is used commonly in western society doesn't really suit me, as though I am committed Christian, I don't even regularly attend a church, though not for lack of trying to find one.

As that applies to this story, and Joshua's words at the end of it, every worldview, be it Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Confucian, or Atheist, has an underlying reason for morality, or lack thereof. As a Christian, mine centers largely around the fact that Man was made in the image of God, with an immortal Spirit, with a heart and soul that live and feel, and that God intended good for us, and us for good things. In essence, this means that anything that violates the value and worth of a human being, via an attack, such as assault, rape, or emotional abuse, or simple neglect, being left homeless, starving, or emotionally alone, is wrong.

When I write the sequel to Brutal Harry, I intend to explore this issue in more detail; I'm not entirely satisfied with this story having a cohesive unified focus and purpose, but that's one of the consequences of it being little more than a plot bunny gone mad. For those who wish to discuss or debate me over the assertions of my Christian worldview, I welcome the opportunity to share thoughts, but ask you wait a couple months, as I will be opening a forum for that purpose, once I adequately figure out how, and have the time to spare from my other projects.

As to the setting this crosses over with, it is a setting created by someone I know; me. I've been working in this setting for something like ten years now, and as this story reflects, it's pretty developed and detailed, only a small fraction of which actually showed up in this story. If things go to schedule, the first of many short stories will be available via e-publishing within a few days of posting this chapter. As I have been without a day job for almost nine months, please please consider purchasing the stories that I put up, as it may literally be the food in my mouth.

For those of you reading my other stories, yes, the Dragon from War In Tokyo originates from the same setting, though under very different conditions. For those of you who do go ahead and look into what I E-publish, be forewarned that Joshua is from at least a hundred years down the timeline from when I will first be writing, so not everything will be immediately recognizeable. On the plus side, once I'm published, I don't have to worry about IPR conflict possibilities, and I won't have to awkwardly word things to keep from mentioning the names of the nations, people groups, etc, that are native to my world.

If you're wondering about a sequel, a full-scale sequel is unlikely, and distant if it does occur, but some short bits dealing with things like the new branch of the Academy, the wind-stones-under-the-continent-issue, and the Elves may pop up. No promises, as I have at least two major other Fanfic projects I need to finish, and my own aforementioned work to focus on, but there you go.