SILVERYMOON

Chapter 17

They had been home for two days after returning from the North. They had their information and proof that they had even been there. They sold all the metal to the City of Silverymoon and had agreed on a total price of 123,000 gold for it.

For their work, they got the rest of their training for free and three magical items that didn't exceed 100,000 gold. It never occurred to them that they could get any number of things that met the total amount. So instead, they agreed on one item that didn't exceed 100,000 gold.

Rick, Kate, and Alexis each chose a Ring of Regeneration. Each ring was worth 90,000 gold which met the requirement. Corimin requested Tome of Leadership and Understanding +4, permanently increasing his Charisma by four points. It cost 110,000 gold, but he used part of his portion from the sale of the metal to cover the difference.

They came home with a magical item and 30,750 gold, in the end. That was except for Corimin, who went home with 20,750 gold for his adventure. His family was now wealthier than they ever had been because he joined the Castles.

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She answered the door. "Alexis!" She was so happy to see her.

"Is Corimin home?" He hadn't been over to see her since they got back. The last time she saw him was the second they had left the Palace.

"He's in his room. He hasn't left it since he got home. Did something happen on that adventure?" She didn't know what to do for him. He was brooding.

"We won. Can I see him?" She was asking to come into their home.

"Of course, my dear. Maybe you'll solve whatever problem he has." She was pinning her hopes on Alexis.

Alexis stopped at his door and knocked. "Cor, can I come in?" Alexis didn't wait for a reply. She opened the door and went inside, where she found him lying on his bed, fully clothed.

Alexis walked over to his bed. She knew this bed well. They had made love on this bed, not to mention hers. "What's wrong? Are you still having trouble with Kate being a Vampire?" It had to be that.

"I'm a Celestial, and she's a… You're a… Rick is a…" It was all incredibly bad.

Alexis's heart ached. "Oh, Cor. I thought we were past all this. You're only half Celestial. There are Half Orcs, Half-Elves, Half Giants, Half Dragons, though I'm still working on how that works." Alexis didn't understand that one. For one, who got who pregnant? Besides, didn't Dragons lay eggs? "There's even Half Fey." She had trouble with that one too. Fey were at most a foot tall, so how could anyone that tiny get someone pregnant? Or the opposite, how did a Cock that wasn't seriously tiny get a Fey pregnant?

"Do I care that you're Half Celestial? If I can look past that, why can't you look past us? Look at what we did. Would an Evil person raid and destroy a mine run by an Evil, Ancient Colossal-sized Red Dragon?" Alexis asked him.

"Better not answer that one." Evil attacking Evil did sound possible. Alexis tried again. "Would we have sold the metal to Silverymoon if we were Evil?" She sighed. "Maybe you better not answer that one either." Selling the metal to whoever they could might still make them Evil.

Alexis kept trying. "We did it to help our City. Does that sound Evil?"

"You don't understand!" he shouted. Vampires were Evil. Demons were Evil. That was what Corimin had learned. He might have been taken in by her and fallen in love with a Demon. Suddenly he was blaming it on the sex.

"Oh, Cor. Don't you understand? We're not from this Realm. We weren't born here. Where we were didn't even have Magic. All our Magic was entirely Illusion, magic tricks involving cards or coins. It's all fake.

"What's electricity? What's a clothes washer? What's a car? An airplane, a train? Why you don't even have a stagecoach, let alone a six-shooter. Dynamite, nuclear bombs. We had things you haven't even dreamed of.

"What we are isn't what you're thinking. You had a spell cast on me when I wasn't looking and learned I wasn't Evil. I didn't ask you if you were Evil. I let you be you and fell in love with you, this you. Why can't you let us be us and love us for what we are, what we do?"

Alexis tried her best to reach him before she lost him. "We have a saying back home, 'Don't judge a book by its cover.' It's a metaphorical phrase that means one should not judge the worth or value of something by its outward appearance alone. I didn't judge you by your cover. Though, I happen to love your cover. You're very handsome and such a good lover," Alexis admitted.

He wouldn't even look at her. Alexis closed her eyes, and a single tear ran down her face. She took a deep breath and stood right in front of him. "Fine," she said, holding her head high, "let me know when you decide that you still love me. I'll be home with my dad and Kate getting ready for next Christmas. You do remember Christmas?" Alexis turned and left his room.

"You were right, he's in a bad mood, but I think he'll recover," Alexis told his mother and let herself out.

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Kate was waiting for her while her dad was out, buying more ink for the printing press. A wrung out Alexis walked in. "And?" Kate asked.

"He's back to having issues with us. Obviously, he hasn't turned us in yet or even told his parents. I'm not certain if I reached him or not. I gave it my best shot," Alexis said tiredly.

Agitated, Kate ran her fingers through her hair. "I'm not sure I want to be on the run. I've been hiding what I am for a long time. I never really thought being a Vampire would cause me this much trouble. I'm not even a Vampire as defined by this place.

"And I just used the forbidden word. So, what else does our city want from us?" Kate asked her.

"It better not be to hunt down that Red Dragon. I'm not doing that. Or that White Dragon. It's cold up there. Make that any Dragon. You don't suppose there are Good Dragons?" Alexis queried.

"Honestly, I'm not sure I want to know. If Dragons are bad, what else is bad? You know that I wished people would stop killing people so I would be out of a job. Now I'm out of a job, and I'm still unsure what I should do with myself," Kate told her.

"Christmas not good enough?" Alexis smiled at her. "You know, we're not pushing Santa, what he does or why he does it, or why Christmas actually exists."

Kate raised an eyebrow then said, "I went from wanting to be a lawyer to being a homicide detective. And now I'm writing Christmas songs."

"Life works in mysterious ways. At least you love Dad." Alexis was willing to hold onto that.

"I didn't at first, but he has a way of wearing you down. I'm starting to wonder if we're changing him, being here. What we're doing just to live here." Kate was concerned about it.

"That's why I have a special project that we need to discuss. Dad doesn't like being serious for too long. It's just not fun. We need to give him something to do, so I have an idea about that," Alexis said hopefully.

Kate sat down and patted the space next to her. That, she wanted to hear.

"Dad likes toys, but, without electricity, he can't have any remote control toys. No cars, no trains, no planes, and while this might come as no surprise, he sucks at sports," Alexis said.

"That's not really a surprise. So what are you thinking?" Kate hadn't heard her idea yet.

"Dad knows a lot of people. One of them was Joe Torre," Alexis told her.

Kate nodded. "So I found out. Talk about a shock! Dad and I love baseball, and here Castle knew my favorite manager." It had taken Kate a long time to wrap her mind around that.

"What do you think about us buying land, probably outside the wall, and building a baseball stadium? We have that instrument. We just need gloves, bats, bases, and a stadium. Maybe complete with food vendors. You think Dad will go for it?" Alexis asked anxiously.

Kate smiled an Evil smile at her. "If he doesn't, I'll make him like it."

Relieved, Alexis smiled back at her. "Tell Dad he just became a manager of the new Silverymoon Yankees."

"I knew there was a reason why I loved you," Kate told her. "I'm not sure what your mother didn't see in you, but I really like what I see."

"Mom is… I'm not sure just what Mom is. Now she's more like a crazy aunt who blows in, pisses everyone off, and blows out again. I'm not sure I understand her. Dad says she loves me, and maybe she does, but she has no idea how to show love. Not a love like I know it.

"I did a search for her once. She's an actress, yet I can't find her in anything. She doesn't even do commercials. But you know what I do worry about? It's Grams. Without Dad, what's she going to do? The loft and the building it's in are paid for, as is the house in the Hamptons. But Grams doesn't have much money.

"There will be bills that need paying. Insurance, utilities, taxes, and others. Dad's cars have bills even just sitting there. If they don't get paid, it all might get repossessed to pay the bills she can't pay. Where would she live? How would she live?" As if worrying about Corimin wasn't enough, she was worried about her grandmother.

Kate chose to put an arm around her and pull her in close. "I wouldn't worry about it too much. Your dad has friends. Mayor Weldon, Captain Montgomery, people I don't even know. Maybe even my dad. She'll be fine, Alexis. Don't worry about her. Worry about us. If Corimin decides to talk, we're in a lot of trouble." That was Kate's main worry at the moment.

"He wouldn't." Alexis had faith. She patted her lap and had Patches hop up into it so she could pet him. Kate was a comfort, but Patches helped more.

"Have you decided what to do with all your magical rings?" Alexis inquired since she had more than two now.

Kate held up her hand. She had her magical engagement ring on one finger and her new Ring of Regeneration on another finger. Then she had a Ring of Invisibility in her pocket.

"Switching out one for the other is all I can think of. I need all three, so what else can I do? Are you adapting to all this magic?" Kate asked her.

"I'm training to be a Sorceress, remember? Cast my very own spells, and wear all of my magical items. The funny thing is, if they had had that Robe of the Archmagi, I would have gotten that instead of this ring." Alexis held up her hand to look at the very same ring Kate was wearing.

"I didn't know some of this stuff was that hard to find. I actually thought they had everything, that they only had to ask for something. Did you know that there is only one of certain things? You don't want to know what those cost." Alexis rolled her eyes.

"I never really thought that hard about money. What I had was enough. Then along came Castle." He had money she was never going to have.

"Dad uses money to help people. But what he doesn't get is that maybe that person doesn't want what he buys them. To him, he's just helping, and he truly wants to help. They say money changes people. All it did to Dad was maybe make him more like himself. He doesn't buy people or want to buy people.

"If he thought your bed needed replacing, you would find a new one at your door without your knowledge. He just wanted to help. His money just makes that possible," Alexis said.

"I've noticed. I would have been mad if he did just that, but I would have let the mattress people replace it and then given Castle a piece of my mind. Sleep on it and admit that he was right, but still be mad at him.

"Sometimes, I wonder why I love him so much. He can really test me on occasion," Kate admitted.

"That sounds like Dad. He does love you. He may have wanted to love Mom, and maybe Gina, but I'm not sure about her. Make no mistake, Kate, you have changed him. He's not the Playboy that Gina tried so hard to make him into. He did love the attention it gave him, though.

"You can expect him to try and make new friends here. Make new contacts. Probably go to the Palace and try and talk to everyone there. Make friends with everyone while he trains to be a Warlock. It's what he does. He may be a Demon, but he won't act like one if he can prevent it.

"If you hadn't taken control, Dad would have tried to talk that big guy into being a new friend. He really would have tried," Alexis admitted to her.

"HIM!? He insulted us the minute he saw us. He wanted to cut us all into pieces with that weapon. And as big as it was, he might have done just that." Kate hadn't seen a weapon that big in her life. Not even in movies.

"If that Red Dragon ever figures out it was us, we're as good as dead." Alexis shuddered. She was absolutely sure of that. "Wait, we know his name, and we have a Crystal Ball of True Seeing." Alexis smiled at Kate, thinking they could put it to use. "We know that big guy's name as well."

"It's in our bedroom," Kate told her.

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"Ergmith Stormrunner Geaneaku," Alexis asked the Crystal Ball, and just as quickly, they saw him. It was him, all right. They would know that body almost anywhere. However, he looked to be in big trouble.

He was trying to stand on just one leg on what seemed to be a small rock in the middle of a sea of LAVA!? It sure looked like it to them. "Is that lava?" Alexis asked Kate.

Granted, not much else had changed about him. He was still wearing what he had been. But he was missing a leg and was surrounded by what looked like lava to both of them.

"How could there be lava when it was the frozen north?" Alexis wondered while they continued watching him trying to maintain his balance. Then out of nowhere, a snake that was literally on fire, much like Patches was, slithered across the lava and rose to look at the guy. It was clearly a snake of some kind. It had a snake's body, and though it had arms much like a man, they were all fire. The head even looked something like a snake's head. It had a spear that looked silver-blue with a green reflective radiance.

"That's that metal we came back with," Kate pointed out.

They both watched this snake-man poke at him with it, and then they heard it laugh, an Evil laugh they had never heard before, not until now.

Alexis looked at Kate. "Do you think that Dragon found him, and this is his punishment for what we did to the place?" Kate said nothing because that was exactly what she was thinking. They had done their jobs. They had destroyed a good portion of the production building. That guy had survived somehow, and now this was his punishment for failing.

"All right, I've seen enough." Kate got her to end it.

"Let's see if we can find this Qoophaengrik." He was next to be scried so they could see him.

Sure enough, almost instantly, Kate and Alexis saw this massively large Red Dragon show up, or at least most of him. He was literally IN a pool of lava. "I guess that answers that," Kate commented as they watched.

The Dragon looked like he was resting in this pool of lava. Then he moved and climbed up out of it and onto some rock. He was clearly in a cave somewhere. As he moved, they eventually saw what appeared to be a single, large, semi-molten pool of GOLD. They could see beautiful gems swimming in the golden pool, along with art objects. One item appeared to be a spear of some kind sticking out of the pool.

"Well, they say a Dragon has a treasure hoard. It kind of reminds me of the treasure Smog had from one of the Hobbits movies, only his gold coins weren't all melted," Alexis pointed out.

Except it didn't explain just how the coins were melted and stayed melted, but why what was swimming in them wasn't. Then suddenly, the vision zeroed in on one of the Dragon's eyes.

"I SEE YOU!"They could hear what could only be the Dragon's voice. Kate quickly grabbed the comforter off her bed and threw it over the Crystal Ball to block the view.

"OH, SHIT!" If Alexis had never been scared before, she certainly was now. "Kate!?"

"We're getting rid of this damn thing first thing tomorrow. We should never have kept it. Why the hell did I let Castle talk me into keeping it? It's worth 80,000 gold! You know what we could do with 80,000 gold?" Kate was going to get rid of this thing even if all she got from it was EIGHT gold coins.

"He better not know where we are, and I don't want to know where he is." Alexis was with Kate. They would sell that cursed thing. "A goddamn Ancient, Colossal Red Dragon, and it saw us! It knows what we look like. We are so dead. We are so freaking dead!"

Kate, while scared herself, wrapped her arms around Alexis. "Relax, I covered it, so it should stop working. He saw us, but he doesn't know who we are, or where we are. He didn't have enough time." At least Kate hoped he didn't have the time. She wasn't even willing to question how he did that.

"You know what this reminds me of?" Alexis asked and grabbed hold of Kate's arms to steady her nerves.

"Don't say it." Kate knew just where she was going.

"Sauron after he came back from the dead. The Great EYE." Then Alexis burst out laughing. "We said we were there because of a Demon Lord called the EYE. OH, SHIT!" Alexis stepped up against Kate. She really needed to be held and told that everything would be all right.

"Sauron was a movie, and all he was was an eye. He had almost no power. They just followed him and did what he told them to do," Kate countered.

"Yep, a talking eye," Alexis maintained. Kate remained silent since Alexis had a point. Sauron in that movie was this one big giant eye that talked.

"That was just a movie. Sauron isn't real. He doesn't exist. This was just a Dragon." Kate tried to calm Alexis and herself.

"Yeah, a Dragon with the power to see us watching him, who now knows what we look like. And if he ever figures out our names, we're as good as dead. I'm not even married yet. Haven't had children." Alexis was sure they were in big trouble.

"We're selling this thing first thing, comforter and all. And then we'll never go near another Crystal Ball again," Kate vowed. "We're from a different Realm, one he knows nothing about. How could he know our full names? Even High Lady Alustriel Silverhand doesn't know our full names. No one here does. You didn't tell Corimin, did you?" Kate looked down at her and saw her shake her head.

They were just Richard Castle, Alexis Castle, and Kate Beckett, and that was all. No one here even knew Kate was short for Katherine.

"Then we're fine." Kate was beginning to feel better. "We don't tell Castle anything. Knowing him, he'll want to uncover this damn thing and look for himself. Agreed?" Kate looked down as she asked her. At first, Alexis nodded her head and then shook it. Seeing that made Kate grin.

"Come on, Castle bought some moonshine, and you're old enough to drink wine. We need something to calm our nerves. We can talk about what we're going to do with 80,000 gold, and we're not telling Castle anything. It's just you and me." Kate took her hand and started walking with Alexis.

"Forty thousand gold, huh?" Alexis could think of a few things she could do with that much money.

"See, you're feeling better already. Lanie always told me that when I felt down, I should go shopping. It would always make me feel better. I'm not really sure it worked, but I'm willing to give it a try," Kate told her.

"A designer dress made just for us," Alexis suggested. "Though, we'll only ever wear it once. How about something magical that costs 40,000 gold? I wonder what that would get us? Maybe a magical pair of hands that can sew anything," Alexis said hopefully.

That had Kate really laughing now. "I love you, Alexis. You're the best. I'm beginning to see what your father sees in you."

"I love you too, Kate." Alexis did her best to hug her. "Now, if I could just get Cor to love me again and make love to me." She could use a little love-making from him about now.

"He'll come around. As someone once told me. Love isn't a switch. You can't just turn it on nor turn it off once it is on. Give him some time. He'll come around."

Kate raised her glass of moonshine, as did Alexis with her glass of wine. "To a dress worth 40,000 gold!"

"And shoes and earrings and maybe a bracelet." Alexis touched Kate's glass with hers and drank. "Maybe I can talk Cor into taking it off of me." Alexis smiled wide since she was feeling better.

"Don't tell your father that!" Kate yelped. "He'll have a heart attack!" And that got Alexis to really start laughing.

"MEOW!"