The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 810: The World Dragon’s Heirs

The party for the Princess’ wedding was a night that would go down as a legend among the students of the Academy.

Not a single graduate managed to make it back to their own home that night, and most were found in the back gardens of the Manor, having failed to even make it to a room.

Sometimes not alone.

There were more shotgun weddings that year than in the entire decade that preceded it, and the young mages placed the blame entirely on the Princess and the abundant supply of high levelled magical alcohol that was served at her wedding.

The retired King had spent a few hours chatting with Alexis, but before any of the other Royals, excluding Prince Russel, who was at the event, could find out that he was back, he had departed again.

And now that they were gone, there was no need for others to rush over, and the King of Chip was free to take his heir and his daughter-in-law back home to begin planning the big formal royal wedding.

Dominic found himself sitting alone at the breakfast table, as most of last night’s guests were still unconscious, and Alexis was busy helping Katerina pack.

They could easily send anything she needed, but Chip would buy her anything that she needed.

She was now their Crown Princess, legally.

Amie came to sit next to Dominic with a long-suffering look on her face.

"I suspect that you’re going to lose your wife for some time," she began.

"Going with Katerina to Chip?"

"Either that or she’s going to go on an extended monster hunting trip to forget about how empty the house feels with only boys in it."

"Understandable. Losing her baby girl isn’t an easy time for her. I’m sure that she will be fine with her Royal Guards, and it’s probably safer if she is not standing next to me when she gets the urge to stab something."

Amie laughed. "You know her well. I just wanted to warn you that her workload would be on you for a while. Do you have any more plans for the Duchy this season?"

"Nothing major. There is that new development going up on the south side of the river. The magitech research facility for the Academy’s grad students. But that’s about it."

Amie leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the seat next to hers.

"No more plans to keep the wife barefoot and pregnant? You’ve got a couple more centuries before you’re too old to rule anymore," the shapeshifter joked.

"And by then I fully expect to have a whole house full of grandchildren. With two sons who seem to be turning into natural ladykillers, I suspect that I won’t be short on potential heirs when the time comes."

Amie laughed. "And then we will all get to watch the competition to become the next heir of the world dragon’s lineage."

"How does that saying go, ’traits skip a generation’, I believe it was. If that holds true, then we should have some great entertainment in store for us when the time comes."

The twins shared a concerned look. They might not understand everything that their father was talking about, but they were not dumb.

They knew that he was talking about them having children that were even more of a nightmare than their older sister. They had only inherited a small portion of the dragon lineage, with small golden nubs of horns in their hairline.

If they had to raise children like Katerina, they weren’t sure that they wanted them.

Plus, girls were rather scary.

Amie tried not to laugh as the concerned boys took their seats at the table.

"Don’t worry, by the time that it matters, you will be all grown up and as strong as your mom, ready to take on anything."

"Not as strong as Dad?"

Amie winked at him, "Trust me, your father is not the scary one. When your mom gets angry, even dragons hide from her."

Dominic nodded. "She’s telling the truth. Your mom is powerful. Now, eat your breakfast, and we will all see your sister off."

From the stairs, Benedict cleared his throat.

"They’re already gone, aren’t they?" Dominic asked.

"Thirty seconds ago. They snuck out the back with the King of Chip. I sent two of the Daves with them, just in case."

With that much security, they didn’t have much to worry about while Alexis was away.

Only boredom.

It was that sort of comfortable boredom, though. The sort where you weren’t waiting for anything, you were just coasting through life, watching all your hard work pay off.

That was the rhythm that Dominic fell into.

Watching his boys grow and graduate the Academy.

Holiday parties where the retired King liked to show up and have the mages grab random family members to join them.

And the steady stream of maintenance, improvements and innovations that kept a magitech dependant Duchy on top of the continental market as trends shifted and faded. Even when magitech became more mainstream and less trendy, the years when an influx of powerful mages began to graduate from the Academies all over the region, Dominic kept the money flowing and their goods in demand with small adjustments.

By the time that his boys were both married and helping him with his duties as Duke, the nation of Chip was giving them a run for their money, with Queen Katerina leading the charge to train their Nobles in higher levels of magic than ever before, in an effort to bolster innovation.

Wistover focused on magitech, Chip focused on purely magical items. And both were becoming fabulously wealthy.

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Dominic sat at the desk in his office, surrounded by grandchildren and great-grandchildren who had come to celebrate his birthday. His eyes were vacant as he looked back over all the years that he had governed Wistover and the Provinces. So much had changed since he was a young man, newlywed with small children of his own.

Wistover was larger now than Kinewen ever was, boasting nearly two million residents and a metropolitan area nearly fifty kilometres across.

This was a big one for him, one hundred fifty years old.

All three of his children had come to see him, and the difference in the bloodlines couldn’t be more apparent. At just over a hundred and twenty years old, the twins were showing their age, their hair thinning and white. In contrast, Katerina stood next to her Elderly husband, her features flawless and her hair as smooth and golden blonde as the day she was married.

Age hadn’t touched her at all.

It was a painful reminder of mortality for Dominic.

Alexis also had more than a little white in her hair, and lines on her face befitting a Noble lady of her experience. But she was aging more slowly than her own sons. Soon, she would have outlived them, while Dominic still appeared to be in his early forties, and her daughter had an ageless eternally youthful body.

Despite the fact that she had over fifty children.

"Father, it’s good to see you again. It’s been too long, you really should come and visit more often. I know that you’ve long since shuffled off all the real work to others," Katerina greeted him.

"I still have to review everything and sign off on it. You know as well as I do, all the responsibility for keeping the bureaucrats honest lies on the ones at the top."

Katerina laughed. "If we need, I will purge the bureaucracy again. It was so satisfying the first time. But tell me, are you planning to groom a successor yet?"

Dominic nodded, and waited for dramatic effect as his daughter’s blunt question got every one of his family’s interest piqued.

"Indeed. From the youngest generation. By the time that they’re old enough to take over, I will be ready to retire and hand over my titles. So, I will make it official today. Twenty-five years from now, the most promising of my successors will be named Heir to Wistover, and everything that comes with it.

The older I get, the harder it is to keep holding human form. Soon, I will be spending the majority of my time in dragon form, and that would never do.

King Claudius might be open-minded for one of my generation, but he’s a human King, not a Dragon King. With the dragon blood taking over, it’s almost time for me to retire in peace.

Perhaps spend some quality time with my wife."

There were quality candidates in the room. Heirs with strong dragon blood, insanely powerful magic on par with Katerina, and the sort of intelligent curiosity that would serve them well as they proved themselves worthy of the title.

"Now, young Miss Beth has made cake, I do believe. Nearly as good as her grandmother, that one is."

It was time for the games to begin.

He had baited them with immense wealth and power. Now, he just had to sit back and see their true colours shine through.

Dominic wrapped his arm around Alexis, who still blushed when he gave her backside a squeeze, even after all this time. They had earned this reprieve, but they couldn’t just hand over Wistover based on age, or to someone who would age too fast to stabilize it before passing it on again.

And then he would take over from Asmodain and his father-in-law, to watch over Cygnia from the shadows of the Beast World.

The work of a World Dragon never truly ended.